Andaman
by Agent Evey
Summary: Two months have passed since Jim's disappearance into the Darklands. Having lost her memory of troll-kind, Dr. Barbara Lake is left with the assumption that her son has been kidnapped, or worse. With a police investigation yielding little evidence, the doctor decides to take matters into her own hands. (No.8 in "Strawberry Shortcake Chronicles" series) Note:series order will change
1. On the Back of the Carton

Two months. Jim had been gone for two months.

Barbara Lake sat at the dinner table. A coffee mug rested beside her hand, unsipped. A milk carton lingered near it, unpoured. Still in her lab coat, stethoscope dangling from her neck, she stared. A hand rose and traced the back of the carton, fingertips chasing droplets of condensation away from the familiar face printed on the back. Beneath the picture, in bold, black letters read:

MISSING: JAMES (JIM) LAKE JR. AGE: 16. HEIGT: 5'5". WEIGHT: 119 LBS. EYE COLOR: BLUE. HAIR COLOR: BROWN. LAST SEEN WEARING A BLUE JACKET WITH A WHITE SHIRT AND BLUE JEAN PANTS, CONVERSE-STYLE SHOES WITH WHITE LAC…

The words blurred together as the water reached her eyes, tears rallying fourth for what must have been the trillionth time since Jim had disappeared. She let her head fall to the table, glasses digging uncomfortably into her cheek and temple, as her body became wracked with sorrow.

Outside, the night hovered like a coiled snake, taunting her with its bleak and lightless eyes. The wind whirred softly past the windows; weather warm, calm and everything her life was not. She sniffled and blinked her way through another wave of tears, blue eyes looking to the picture, which now hovered above her head.

"Sweetie, _please._ " She whispered weakly into the crook of her elbow, "please be alright. Please come home."

She gasped and held her breath, trying to control her sorrow, to gain some sense of composure, but found that it only unraveled her all the more. This time, she didn't hold back the sobs.

There was no one there-no one to listen, or comfort, or care; only an empty house full of washed-out memories and dreams.

She remembered the first time she'd stepped into the home, over a decade prior. Her husband, James, had been away at the time—off on a business trip for his work. The realtor had given her a key and a time to tour the next prospective buy. After viewing dozens of houses, she was tired of searching, of driving, of coordinating, and of being disappointed in every property she saw.

 _This has to be the one._ She'd thought as she inserted the key into the shiny brass door. Walking through, clutching her swelling stomach, she'd taken in the smell of the fresh paint and new wood, and the warmth of yellow sunlight bouncing off the walls. For the first time, she felt hope.

"You're gonna grow up here," she said when she reached the top of the stairs, swaying from side to side in the empty room as she hugged her stomach. "We're going to build a life: you, me, your father, some brothers and sisters...maybe a dog." She blinked. "Do you like dogs?" she looked down, asking her navel. "I've always liked dogs."

She only felt a kick in return, but it made her smile all the same. "Just stay safe in there okay?" she said, poking back at her stomach in jest. "You'll be out here soon enough. It's scary, at first, but you get used to it. We'll make it, together, and you'll always have a home."

" _Always."_ The word echoed in her mind as a knock on the door woke her up. She lifted her head off of the table, wiping off the dried up tears and drool. The milk carton was warm, the coffee beside it no longer brimming with steam; she looked to the clock. 11PM. An hour had passed since she'd first sat down.

The knocking came again. This time, it was louder, more insistent. She groaned as she stood and fixed her glasses.

A few footsteps saw her standing in front of the door and peeking into the eye-hole at its center. A short, stout figure lingered on the doorstep.

"Toby?" she asked softly to herself, then moved to unfasten the locks.

When the door swung open, he was holding his hands to his knees, as though trying to recover.

"Hey, Dr. L.," He huffed, out of breath. "Uh, is this a good time?"

"Well, I...is everything okay?" Her eyes scanned the flushed tone of his face.

"It's Nana." He said, launching into the matter at hand, "she fell over in the bathtub and won't let me come in. She can't get up, but she doesn't want me to call an ambulance. I guess it's too expensive. So, um, she said to come get you if you were home."

"Okay," Barbara gestured to the air, body launching into action. "Just let me get my keys. I'll be right back."

An hour later, she was leaning against the doorway of Toby's grandmother's kitchen, the deep blue of her eyes scanning the figure that was dozing at the breakfast table.

"Hey," she walked over and gently shook the child's arm, "Toby, sweetie, wake up."

"Five more minutes," the teenager murmured into the plaid, plastic surface of the cover that had been placed over the wood of table.

A small smile tugged at her lips, "it's your Nana, hun, I've gotten her into bed and-."

The sudden yelp he gave nearly had her jumping out of her lab coat. "Nana!" he exclaimed, the whole thing coming back to him at once. "Is she okay? Is she going to live! Do we have to take her to the hospital!?"

Her lithe hand flew to his shoulder, trying to steady him.

"It's _fine_ ," she said calmly, and with trained patience. "Your Nana's going to be just fine. I got her up and dressed, and into bed. She's resting, for the moment." The doctor paused and looked him in the eyes. "Now, she has some pretty heavy bruises on her hip and shoulder. I'm worried that she might have a small fracture in her pelvis. With older people, that can lead to a pretty serious situation. She's already having a little bit of trouble walking, so I'm going to take her to work with me. That way, we'll avoid the ambulance fee and I can put her on my patient list, okay? I go in at two o'clock, anyways, so showing up a little early with some business won't hurt."

"But didn't you just get off of work?" He asked, green eyes glowing with concern.

Barbara nodded. "Yeah, well, story of my life," she smirked. "You're Nana wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. I'm going to wait in the kitchen and we'll discuss what we need to do when you're done."

There was a cup in the dish rack near the sink. She took it and filled it a quarter full with water. "Make sure she only takes the two blue pills from her box. I took the others out but I don't think she likes the idea. Just a few sips of water until I know we're not going to put her under."

"What are the blue pills?"

"Levothyroxine," she said, "it's just a thyroid hormone. She probably has Hashimoto's. A lot of women do."

Toby blinked up at her as though they'd just met. "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen you in doctor-mode before. You know all this stuff. It's like you're a superhero."

This time, her smile reached her eyes, "Well, I don't always feel like one, but thanks. Now go on before your Nana tries to fall asleep. If you see her trying to go for that yellow pill, take it away. It's a sedative so she can sleep. I'm worried she's going to sneak one in on me and it will create a massive problem if she does."

"Don't let Nana pop pills, got it." He nodded, and launched a foot toward his grandmother's door. "I'll see you in a few."

As Toby hurried away, she sat at the circular table with the plastic tablecloth. Her muscles ached from the strain of lifting the older woman out of the bathtub. Massaging her neck, she yawned and looked at the clock.

 _No rest for the weary,_ she thought, then rested her forehead against her arm. The room around her was dense, brown, and old, but it spoke of a grandmother's home. The scent of classic cooking reminded her of the way her own home smelled when her son was in the kitchen.

Since his departure, she hadn't eaten a single full meal. Food was a necessity, no longer an enjoyment, and she consumed only what was required to "get by." Breakfasts were especially hard. Jim loved breakfast.

" _Mommy can I help?"_ An image of her son, barely five, flashed within her mind. The previous day had been his birthday—a long day-and she was trying to make up for the bad moments. She remembered how confused her son had been, holding on to his unassembled bike-handle, as James Sr. walked out of her door for the last time.

"Sure honey," she'd said, as he jumped up on the counter top. "Woah there, when did you get tall enough to jump like that?"

"I'm _five_ mom," he'd said pretentiously, "I'm bigger than you think."

She'd ruffled his hair and handed him the whisk. As she poured the milk, he'd looked up to her with his crystal eyes.

"When's Daddy coming back to finish my bike?"

"I don't know if he's coming back, sweetie." She'd been trying to hide the pain from him all night, all morning. This time, she couldn't stop the tears. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she tried to make herself stop.

The small hand on her arm meant everything. "It's okay mommy," he said, "I'll make you pancakes."

They'd worked together, made the pancakes, started a new life—smiley-syrup and all.

The clanging of drawers and silverware woke her up. Her hand was numb, neck still sore as she lifted her head off the table.

Toby entered her line of vision as she began to rub at her temples. She wondered if he'd caught her sleeping.

"I made you a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich! " He exclaimed, holding up a paper plate topped with what looked like a suggestion of food. "Nana said you needed to eat because you look like a stick. I opened up a new jar of jelly and everything. All we have is apple so, you know, if you're allergic we can just go full PB and forget the J. Oh, and there's little slices of banana in there, too. Ol' Jimbo probably would have thought of something better but, y'know…I don't really have his creative flair." He trailed off, then his green eyes shot up. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Umm," She looked at the congealed mass, then to his eager eyes. "No…not yet."

"Right on, Dr. L." He slid the plate down to her. "I'll be right back with some milk. I hope you like skim, that's all Nana drinks."

Toby disappeared into the kitchen, only to return moments later with two glasses full of milk and a roll of paper towels. He sat at the adjacent chair, and scooted in until his stomach hit the table. Clearing his throat, he blinked up at her expectantly.

She took one bite of the tan-and-yellow blob and swallowed it thickly, then set it down in the paper plate.

"Thank you, Toby," she said as she wiped her upper lip with a paper towel, "I know it's probably been hard with just you and your Nana, and…and with Jim being gone." Her throat went tight. "You were his best friend. If you ever need to talk to me you're always welcome. You know that, don't you? "

"Aww, well, yeah, of course." He wiped a hand across his mouth, smudging jelly on his chin. "You're like my second mom, right?"

Her eyes softened.

"I have been meaning to ask you one thing." He said, frowning slightly, and with obvious hesitation. "Are you mad at me? I mean, I know the police had to ask me a lot of questions because I'm his best friend-and I _was_ the one who was with him a lot of the times he got in trouble—but part of me wonders if you think that I'm the one who led him down the path he eventually took."

"Oh, honey, no." She shook her head, placing a hand on the table. "I mean, at first I didn' t know what to think but…I have a feeling that Jim was the one that led _you_ into some of this stuff, not the other way around. I love my son, but he had a lot going on. If anything, I blame myself-for not being around, for getting caught up in my job..." she tucked a strand of hair behind her ears, voice marked with sadness. "I wasn't always there for him, and I should have been."

"Don't say that. You're a great mom, and you've always done what you think is best for Jim. I just want you to know that I never would have knowingly let him disappear like he did. I was always afraid he'd go loner on me, and now that he has," he put his sandwich down, half eaten, and stared into the void. "It's just now beginning to hit me that he might not ever come back."

Barbara's heart sank, and she swallowed as the tears threatened to come again. As a doctor, she was used to pain, to disappointment, to loss, but as a mother…

"I know he's alive," she said, blue eyes watery, but determined. "I keep getting this feeling that I'm missing something—like there's some important detail that I've overlooked or forgotten. Whatever it is, my gut tells me that it's going to bring him home. We're going to do everything we can to find him, okay?" She reached to grasp his hand. "I promise."

"Okay, Dr. Lake," he smiled a small smile.

With little more to say without bringing herself to tears, she stood and picked up her plate. "Alright kid, I hate to bite-and-run, but to you have a plastic baggy for this? I'm going to run back over to the house and get the car…maybe grab a few things before I leave. Just keep an eye on your Nana for me and let her rest until I get back, okay?"

"Yes ma'am," he gave a salute.

"And don't worry about school tomorrow, I'll write a note," she said as she grabbed her keys,. "You gonna be okay holding down the fort by yourself tonight?"

"King-of-the-house?" He said with a brow. "I think I can handle that. Oh, and Dr. L.?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks. Really. I know this is saving Nana a lot of money."

"It's the least I can do," she said, then turned to make her way out the door.

Once outside, she took a deep breath, inhaling the light, floral scent of the cooling night air. Another flash behind her eyes: _a hand holding hers, the smell of jasmine in the air,-not James'; his hands we're course, wide, and rough; these were long, lithe, and smooth-a voice like distant thunder murmuring in her ear._

She shook her head. _Lack of sleep,_ she told herself, but she only half-believed it.

Her home was cold and dark when she entered it again. A few minutes saw her hair straightened of its frizz and her teeth brushed. She took off her lab coat—a clean one waited for her at the clinic—and stuffed the stethoscope in her bag.

As the garage door lifted, the light from street-lamps filtered in, and her eyes fell on the soft, blue paint of Jim's Vespa. Beside it, her recently purchased vehicle from "Randy's Used Autos" sat like a little green lump. She didn't know why she'd purchased the green one. Suddenly, she liked the color.

Her other car remained missing...along with her son…along with her son's teacher…along with all the answers that remained hidden since the night she'd hit her head and ended up in the hospital.

Briefly, she eyed the scooter, and walked up to her hand along its smooth surface. _Why the car?_ She thought before turning to her own vehicle. The blue of her eyes remained focused on the scooter as she sat and shut the door.

"Why my son?" her voice echoed in the cabin.

She propped her head on the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and tasted salt.


	2. Stargazing

_The Andaman Sea: off the coast of Thailand..._

The shallow water of the cave glowed a murky, jungle-green as the troll, Stricklander, stepped into its depths, following the shadows that grew darker and longer as the sun crept away from the earth. By the time he got to the mouth of the cave, he was waist-deep in the water.

The spray from the waves made him close his eyes. He stepped forward, deeper, until the water reached his neck.

If he stood there long enough, maybe it would shape him into something else…

In a flash, his mind went back.

Two months ago. He could hear the heavy footfalls beating against the pavement, mixing with the rush of his breath.

One thought kept passing through his mind:

He was going to lose her.

He swept past the manicured lawns, through the yards and over fences. Dogs barked. Cats hissed. A couple of people yelped. He didn't care.

He had to get to her.

Jumping over another fence, he skidded onto the asphault of a familiar street. _One more turn._ He ran along the road until he could finally see her porchlight. A brief pause as he stopped, scanned the area, and then bolted again.

Vaulting over the porch-steps, he rushed up to the door, sparing only a moment to rest his lungs, teeth gritting as he pressed his forehead against the frame.

"Please," he didn't know who he was praying to, "please don't have her."

Angor hadn't hurt her-that much, he knew-but whether or not he'd caught her was the question of the hour. Although the car accident had been enough to cause a delay, he knew it wouldn't stop the assassin frrome coming. There was no knowing what lurked within the walls of her home, or what trap he might be walking into. He could only hope that the troll "Drall" still lingered in his lover's basement.

The changeling took a breath, steadied his heart, and then jammed his finger into the doorbell. Seconds passed as he felt his heart beating in his throat.

Silence. Then footsteps. He sighed.

Relief.

"Hey, Walt" she said as she opened the door, having eyed him through the frosted glass. The door creaked as it opened, and she started to smile, but paused, seeing the flush in his face and the line of worry between his brows. "Are you okay?"

"Barbara," the changeling crashed against her, arms circling around her like a vice. "Oh, thank the stars," he whispered into her ear.

Pulling back, she tried to look over him again, working to assess the situation, but before she could blink, before the air could leave her lungs to speak, his lips were on her, desperation and passion flowing out of every muscle in his body.

Her hands flew to his shoulders, squeezing them as a noise of surprise lifted from somewhere within her throat.

"Walt." She spoke between the flurries of kisses, trying to calm him down.

If he'd heard her, he didn't show it, his attentions only growing more fervent beneath the heavy blue glow of twilight. A shaky hand circled into her hair, cradling her head as he attempted to deepen the kiss.

To his relief, she let him in, her palm smoothing along the front of his sweater to feel his heart racing beneath. For a few minutes, they stayed like that, his lips pressing hard against hers, while her own mouth responded with a pliancy she hoped would quell his distress. When she tried to pull away again, he stepped forward, not wanting to break apart, wishing only to get closer as he pressed her back and into the surface of door, causing both her and the door to swing back. She grabbed onto him, hands clinging to the lapels of his jacket as she desperately tried not to fall. To their combined relief, he caught himself before they both went tumbling onto the floor.

The motion forced their mouths apart, and she had barely enough time to glance at his eyes before he squeezed them shut.

They were red, bloodshot, and wet with tears.

He wasn't drunk. She knew that much—he was far too coordinated, and had nothing on his breath aside—but he was obviously alarmed and obviously trapped within some state of shock.

Arms curling around her, he pulled her toward him once more, burying his face against her neck, kissing up and down the curve of her shoulder. His hands slid down until they squeezed her hips, and then dipped beneath the hem of her scrubs to smooth across her bare stomach.

She sucked in a breath, not expecting this strange and sudden urgency he displayed. With him, there was a pattern-a series of events or plans that consistently steered them toward their more serious or romantic moments. One thing _always_ led to another. Not this time. _This_ was entirely out of the blue and she felt utterly at a loss on how to handle it.

Still reeling, Walter worked his way up to her jaw. Kissing and biting. Rough, too rough, compared to their typical faire. She reached for her shirt, curling her fingers over the bump his hand made beneath the fabric.  
Before he could reach her lips, her other hand rose to cup his chin.

"Walt, please, we have to stop. _You_ have to stop," she said, her voice gentle, but insistent.

" _We can always stop,"_ his own words whispered across his mind.

This time, he stilled. This time, he listened as his shoulders slumped and his hands fell away.

"Barbara," he whispered, pushing past the lump in his throat as his green eyes blinked up at her. She was biting her lip in that worried way he loved, except instead of being anxious over Jim, or her work hours, or over some invented weakness she saw within herself, her concern was focused on _him_.

 _Idiot._ He thought to himself. _She has enough trouble in her life. You shouldn't have brought this to her._

He looked around them, at the purple clouds that were shedding their last tresses of orange, at the warm yellow glow of the porchlights, at how exposed they were beneath the darkening sky.

"I'm sorry," he stuttered, shaking his head. "That was entirely out of line, I shouldn't—"

"Hey, hey," she soothed before he could go any further, "it's not that I don't want that." A small hand slid down to squeeze his shoulder. "It's just…I can tell that something's wrong."

Her touch doubled back, thumb tracing along his jawline as her fingers combed lightly through his hair.

"Walt, you can talk to me, okay? You don't have to hide what you're feeling."

He looked at her, and she could see his pupils pulsing with hesitation.

"I'm not going to see you as any less of a person." She whispered into the silence.

For a moment, he wanted to believe her. The changeling leaned into her touch, lips pressing into her palm as he contemplated telling her everything. It would be easy. He would start from the beginning, when he'd first realized that Jim was the Trollhunter, and work his way into the current situation. Angor existed to protect _all_ of them: he kept the Janus order placated with Walter's commitment to villainy, he kept Jim distracted from rescuing the children in the Darklands, and, most importantly, he unwittingly kept Walter's interests alive with his enchantments.

Only recently had Angor realized the truth…that he wasn't getting his soul back, because he wasn't going to be killing the Trollhunter. If there was one thing changelings were good at, it was deception. Although he'd tricked them all into thinking otherwise, Walter didn't actually desire to see Jim dead; and because he didn't want it, Angor couldn't carry it out. The assassin could do little more than toy with the child hero.

It was why he was so angry now, and why he was out for blood. He'd had no ability to strike the final blow.

Until now, that was-the changeling could only guess what had happened to the ring. Somehow, he knew that Jim was involved.

"It's okay," he heard Barbara whisper, her thumb still stroking his cheek.

He pushed through the haze of thought, returning to her, letting the blue of her eyes wash over him like a wave.

Maybe he couldn't tell her the truth, but he could tell her something closer to it.

"Darling, it's just…" He stepped back, took both her hands in his, squeezed them, "there's a… tiger on the loose."

 _What on earth am I saying?_ he thought.

"Tiger?" She blinked up at him.

"Yes, a tiger." He continued, "I have an acquaintance at the zoo. You won't have heard it on the news. It was headed in this direction when they last caught sight of it."

"Oh," her brows furrowed, and then she shrugged. "Well, I mean, is it really that dangerous? If it's from the zoo? I've heard that tigers are pretty solitary."

"Apparently it was being rehabilitated from a life in the circus. It attacked one of its handlers, and has showed extreme aggression on its path along the streets."

"Okay," she nodded, taking a moment to study him. Something still seemed…off. "Walt, you're shaking," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Are you really that afraid of tigers?"

"Yes." He nodded, trying to sound convincing. "I have a tremendous phobia. It's the stripes that get me, really. Nothing found in nature should have that consistency in pattern."

She made a face, unsure of how to take the information. "You're sure this is about a tiger?" she asked one more time.

A breeze swept by them as he paused, judging her reaction. Her expression looked calm, patient-curious, even-but not critical. She was every bit the doctor she claimed to be—allowing the full story to unfold before making a diagnosis.

 _Now is the moment,_ he thought. _Tell her. Begin the path of truth._

He could already hear the right words:  
 _"No, my love, it isn't. You are right to suspect. Something happened tonight. An old adversary from a time long past came to pay me a visit. He tracked me down, cornered me, and threatened both my life and everything I hold dear. I'm afraid I'm the reason he's currently in prison, so to speak. I came here because I was worried about you, because I thought I might never see you again, and because you deserve the truth…I have owed it to you for some time."_

But he didn't say that. He didn't say anything at all. Instead, his head tilted down into a slow and guilty nod.

And oh, how in that moment he regretted his decision, staring into her blue and shining eyes. Tying his fate to hers-it had only been to keep Jim from harming him, and to keep the order convinced that he remained committed to their cause—it wasn't supposed to put her life in danger.

"Well," she looked down, and her hand fell away, "I should probably call and warn-"

The sound of beeping jolted them both. The doctor reached behind the door and into her lab coat, which was hanging from the rack. She pulled out her phone, and smiled. "Wow," she said, "I swear this kid has a sixth sense."

"Hey sweetie," she spoke into the receiver.

Walter could hear Jim's voice murmuring from the other end. As they spoke, he took a moment to look over his shoulder. Nothing moved within the shadows or the dingy street lights. More than likely, Angor Rot had tried his apartment first. Or perhaps he was paying a visit to Otto, Walter thought as he smiled. It seemed likely that Angor would suspect his former comrade of harboring him. _Serves him right._

Of course, eventually the assassin would come a-knocking on the door of Lake household. Angor was no fool. He'd done the math-he knew how the changeling felt about the human. It was only a matter of time before the assassin exploited both their magical bond _and_ their emotional one.

"Yeah, a tiger, can you believe that?" Walter's ears caught the dialogue as their conversation continued. "Just look out for it on your way home. The pizza should be done by the time you get—pizza! Oh no! I gotta go, love you."

Her eyes widened as she looked at Walter. "Gah!" She exclaimed, and flew into the kitchen.

The changeling took that as his cue to come inside.

Shutting the door behind him, he walked into the familiar home, past the hallway and the dining room, and into the kitchen, where they'd created so many memories.

Somehow, he knew this was the last time.

His long hand smoothed along the countertop, coming around to where she was as she fished the pizza out of the oven.

Barbara sighed as she set the pizza stone on a trivet. Half of the pie looked burnt; the other half looked mildly salvageable.

"We were supposed to have a quick meal before I went to work." She tented a hand along her temple. "Oh, I can't do anything right today."

Outside of her periphery, he gazed at her, eyes warm with adoration. Of all the things that they could possibly do in their last moments together, he could think of nothing better.

"How much time?" He said, as he moved to wash his hands at the sink.

"Hmm?" she intoned, adjusting her glasses as she looked up at him.

"Until Jim gets home. How much time?"

"Oh," she shook her head. "fifteen...maybe twenty minutes. He said he had to drop Claire off. Why?"

"I know a recipe that requires no yeast." He pecked her on the cheek as he wiped his hands with a dishcloth. "We can have it done and in the oven in less than ten minutes."

Hitting him lightly with the oven mitt, she smiled.

Precisely sixteen minutes later, he finished washing the last of the measuring cups he'd used. The cheese was slowly getting glassy in the oven as the dough beneath bubbled and brewed with the warmth.

As Barbara dried the mixing bowl, she looked up at him and laughed.

"What?" The side of his lip tugged upward as he set the dish upon the rack.

"You-" a snort escaped her and she placed a hand over her mouth and nose, "you have flour on your face. Oh my god," she braced her hand against the counter, descending into a fit of giggles.

"And what about that is so funny?" He crossed his arms and rose a challenging brow, unable to hide his own smirk.

"I don't know," she could hardly breathe. "You're-," she tried to look up at him and laughed some more. "-you're always so groomed and proper and-" she snorted through her nose, then, doubled over, arm stretching over the counter as she tried to quell her humor.

The wave of mirth had caught her in its grasp would not let go, and he could hardly keep from laughing himself as he approached her.

"C'mere you," he said, scooping her into his arms with a growl.

"I'll have you know that this," he indicated his face, "is an ancient Scandinavian _war_ mask." He wrapped his arms tightly around her, spinning as he spoke. "How dare you insult such a sacred custom."

The doctor's arms circled around his neck. "Uh-huh, and to which specific group of people are you ascribing this custom?"

"Well," he thought for a moment, "you know, the northern Germanic tribes were not particularly known for their use of war paint, perhaps the Picts would have been a better reference. Although, I was studying at the monastery of Lindisfarne during the first famed attack of the Vikings in 793, and I can tell you, some of those soldiers were _definitely_ sporting it for effect. Scared one of the monks right out of his robes."

"Oh, well, looking pretty good for being over a thousand years old, Mr. History."

Realizing his misstep, the changeling's eyes widened. "Y-yes," he said with a recovering smile. "It's the marmite, really. Keeps you longer than salted cod."

She brushed the flour from his face, and craned upward to kiss him. "Well, at least you don't taste like it," she said, pulling away. "Not that I don't love your strange British habits."

"Oh, you enjoy them, do you?" He gave her a devilish brow. "Have I shown you my latest habit? It's all the rage in England. They call it 'snogging someone senseless'. Here, let me show you."

Strings of giggles echoed through cavern of the empty home as Walter kissed her all over. Still holding her in his arms, he walked her slowly toward the living room, keeping a sharp ear out for the oven's beeper. But just as her giggles turned to gasps and groans, he heard a familiar sound—the revving and whirring of a small engine as it made its way down the road.

Barbara must have heard it too, because her lips fell away, and she looked toward the window.

A small beam from a headlight hit the far side of the wall, getting larger as the vehicle approached. Walter set her down, hand smoothing along her side as he let her go. He looked gravely at the door.

"Walt, I-"

"Darling, I understand," he spoke, interrupting her, "Jim isn't very fond of me…of us. I don't want to make things harder between the two of you."

"I really wish it could be different," she said in low tones.

The green in his eyes seemed to dim as he looked up, his expression sincere. "Me too." He took her hand, squeezed it, and then kissed it one last time.

Looking toward the doorway, Walter could see her son pulling into the front. "I'll take the back route, shall I?" He said with a smile.

Together, they walked to the back. Once outside, she paused with him at the gate.

"No sign of a tiger yet." Her lips tugged upward, "Did you walk here, by the way? I didn't see your car."

An image of his vehicle smoldering at the bottom of cliff came to mind.

"It's just around the corner," he explained, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Small hands squeezed his within the dark. "You sure you're okay going out there?"

"I'll be fine," his words were low and soft, rolling in a way he knew she liked. "That Vespa could scare away anything."

The doctor chuckled and blinked up at him, eyes shimmering with warmth.

Here it was, he thought, the last time. If Angor Rot killed him, this would be the end.

Staring into her world-blue gaze, his own eyes became glassy. There hadn't been enough time. He wanted more—wanted to hold her, to love her, to see the sunlight on her skin as it dancd with morning glee.

There had to be a way. She meant everything.

It was in that moment that the thought occurred to him. So distracted was he by his worry over Barbara, that he overlooked the obvious.

" _Mom, are you in here?"_ Jim's voice floated from the house. _"The oven beeped. I got the pizza out. This smells pretty good!"_

"Wow. Usually, he tries to sneak upstairs before I can ask about his day." Her lip slanted sideways in that way he adored. "I guess I'd better go."

As she tucked her hair behind her ear, he bent low to kiss her, moaning when her tongue slid against his in the dark. Gently, his hand cupped her cheek, clinging to the moment for as long as he could.

" _Mom?"_ Jim shouted again. This time, he sounded slightly worried.

They broke away. He nuzzled his nose against hers as he took a step back.

"Goodnight, Barbara." He husked.

Her hand slid down his shoulder, and she shot him a knowing look. "Goodnight."

Jumping up, he vaulted over the gate with a level of agility that she did not expect, landing silently on the other side.

He heard her chuckle, and smiled on the other side. Good, he thought, it had had the desired effect.

"I'm out here!" He heard Barbara's call as she opened the backdoor.

"Oh, wow." Jim's voice came from inside. "What were you doing out there? "

"Uh-," her voice faltered, "stargazing. It's a beautiful night."

"I thought there was a tiger on the loose."

"I didn't go very far," she explained. "Hey, did you see the pizza?"

The door closed behind her, and their voices became muffled.

Hope and anxiety burning within his chest, he slipped into the hedges of her yard. If Angor came before Barbara left for work, he would be ready to fight him, and if not—well, he had a bargain to strike with the Trollhunter.

A bargain that would change his alliances forever.

A bargain that, two months later, had landed him in a cave.

Stricklander shook his horns to get the water off of them as he rose out of the shallow cove, shrouded by the black of night. A fish wriggled and thrashed from the end of a make-shift spear that he held, causing his grip to tighten. He took his knife from the end of the stick and severed the head, then slid the body lengthwise into the center of the pole. A small fire flickered in the sand along the floor. He crouched beside it, and stoked its warmth, then with his long, clawed fingers set it gently on the cooking mount he'd devised.

All of this, he did in silence. All of it, he did with a heavy heart.

A gust of wind came jetting from the back of the cave, where a long crack loomed within the dark. The fire flickered and crackled in agitation. It was then that he started chanting.

His low voice went up and down, in and out, ebbing and flowing with the changing of the tides, until the orange glow against his gaspeite skin turned purple, then gray, then deep blue as night came over the land. A sliver of moonlight entered the scene. He held the fish's head up to it, and watched its eyes as they glazed and began to glow like moonstone.

A smile cracked over his features, and he chucked the head into the crevice in the dark. Satisfied with his work, he rotated his own meal over the fire.

Eventually, she would smell them. Eventually, she would see the hundred eyes, glowing blankly through the dark. Eventually, the demon would come.

And he had an offer to make.


	3. Son of the Sea

Friday night and she was _still_ at work.

Barbara sighed as she set yet another stack of paperwork on her desk. Entering her rushed, hand-written notes into the clinic's Electronic Health Records system was one of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of her job. It was something they didn't warn her about in medical school—that she'd be spending half of her time in front of a computer screen, filling the empty boxes in her patients' files. Because of the hospitals legal requirements, she couldn't outsource the task to someone else, which meant a profound headache for her and less time spent doing the job she actually loved. Still, she was used to the routine and, by now, reasoned that she could fill most of the charts in her sleep.

Not that she ever slept these days.

She looked out the window, to the sky and the blazing orange sun as it lowered itself behind the Sierras. Somewhere out there, her son was fighting for his life.

And he _was_ alive. He had to be.

From an early stage, Jim possessed a warrior's spirit. He saw opportunity in challenge, and never stopped fighting for what he wanted, or for what he thought was right. She remembered the first time he'd gotten into trouble at school-an afternoon call in the middle of her shift, back when she was still a resident at the hospital—trying to prove to be a physician worthy of permanent hire. Already a single mother, she'd been unable to get ahold of any friends or family, and was forced to pick him up herself.

Jim didn't cry until he saw her, so stoic had he been about not showing emotion in from of his teachers and the school staff. She'd rushed to the ground, knees sliding to the floor to where he sat in a small chair before any of the clinic staff could even ask her who she was. His teacher came behind her, followed by the principal.

A large, swollen circle of black rested around his eye, accompanied by a cut along his cheekbone. She quipped at the staff for not having iced it down soon enough, only to find out that Jim had been hiding his wound for half the class after coming back from recess.

"Mommy he stoled her Princess Gargoyle," he sobbed, only half making sense through the blubbering. Lucky for her, she'd been deciphering his babbles since he was a toddler. "I said give it back."

"Honey, do you feel okay," she said, running her fingers across his head and neck. "Look at me," he obeyed as she took aa ight out of the pocket of her scrubs and checked his pupils. "Do you have a headache? Or a tummy ache? Or see any blinky lights?"

He shook his head, dark hair swaying into his yes. "My eyeball hurts," he sniffed as he jabbed his fingers into the aforementioned area. "Owie."

"Don't poke it," gently, she'd pushed his hands away. "Honey, who stole it? Who hit you? Your teachers want to know so they can talk to him."

He shook his head, and began to sob anew.

"You're afraid he's going to hit you again?"

She grabbed a tissue, and wiped at his eyes as he nodded, careful not aggravate his injury. "He told me I didn't have a daddy so I can't learn to fight him."

"So you didn't punch him back, Jim?" The principal chimed in, "he's not hurt somewhere."

"No," he balled his fists over his eyes as he shook his head, clearly distressed by the interrogation.

Wasting no time, she took him in her arms and lifted him from the chair. "That's enough." She glared at the principal, annoyed that she'd been bullied into questioning her son in the first place. "He's telling the truth, you got what you wanted. I have to take him home now."

"But we need to know..."

"I said _enough,_ " Her blue eyes almost ran white with annoyance. "Thank you for calling me, but please, just give me whatever paperwork I have to sign so we can get out of here."

Shorter than her, the principal shrank away.

All the way to the car, he kept sobbing, and she kept whispering "it's okay" into his ear.

She looked into his crystal eyes as she buckled him in to the booster seat, "you did the right thing, sweetie. You don't ever hurt someone unless it's a last resort. Okay?" she squeezed his shoulder.

"What's a last retort?"

"Resort. It means you don't have any other options, that you don't have a choice. I wish I could tell you that you'll never ever have to choose to hurt someone, but there _are_ bad people out there, and it's our responsibility to know when it's appropriate to defend ourselves, or to protect other people against harm."

"Okay," he said with a sniff, only half understanding, watching her crack an instant cold pack and shake it in the air. It had a penguin etched onto its surface.

"Hold Mr. Penguin on your eye," she instructed, placing the pack in his hand and lifting it to show him how. "I'm proud of you for standing up for that girl. She might have gotten hurt instead. And that boy is wrong. You don't need daddy to teach you how to defend yourself. Mommy can show you how. "

Maybe she hadn't taught him enough.

A gentle rapping on her door caught her attention, and she looked up to see the administrator, Wanda, walking into the room. "Hey, Barb. I'm just coming in to check on you. Everything okay in here?"

"Yeah," she said, blinking away the wetness in her eyes. "Just working on some EHR stuff."

"Do you mind if I get personal for a moment?" the administrator sat down in the guest's chair.

The doctor shook her head. "What's up?"

"I've been a little concerned lately about your performance at the clinic. Dr. Fox informed me that you'd been having some trouble." Wanda placed a hand on the desk. "I'm worried that you're not taking enough time for yourself to -" she paused, looking into the doctor's tired eyes, "to process what has happened. How are you holding up?"

"Listen, I understand your concern, and I know that Jeanie's worried about me, but I can assure you, I'll be fine. I'm _fine_ "

"She said that she caught you sleeping in the prep room while waiting for a code blue to come in from transit, and apparently you've been so disoriented during some of your shifts that you've walked into the wrong rooms. Your patent care record remains as spotless as usual, but I'm worried that these little things may lead to bigger mistakes."

With a calming sigh, she looked into the administrator's eyes. "My son is missing, Wanda. I'm never, ever going to reach a point where I'm okay with that." Quietly, she wiped the pools of water from the sides of her eyes. "Every time I go home, I half-expect to see him messing around in the kitchen, or playing with his friends outside, and instead I get an empty building where once had a family. Work is the only thing that's keeping me from going insane."

"Has there been any news concerning the case?"

"Nothing solid," her head shook, "Detective Brennan is leading the investigation. So far, they're drawing a lot of blanks. I'm meeting with him after I finish up tonight."

The administrator took a deep breath, and joined Barbara's gaze toward the mountains.

"I trust your judgment, Barbara." The woman said at long last, "and I want you to know that we're here for you, but if at any point you feel like it's too much, or you're overwhelmed, please don't hesitate to ask for some time off. The small mistakes can be forgiven, but if it goes any further, then at a certain point my hands will be tied. My priority is to make sure that both you and your patients remain safe, and I will do what I must to ensure that."

"I understand." The Doctor kept a steady eye.

Satisfied with her response, Wanda nodded and rose from the chair. Barbara could see the lines of worry etched into the woman's rigid posture as she walked out of the door. She closed her eyes, and placed her forehead onto her locked hands. Part of her knew that Wanda was right, that she was slowly clawing her way into becoming a hazard to her patients-she cared, immensely, about the wellbeing of those whose health rested her hands, and she took her commitment very seriously—but the other part of her felt resentful. Fate had dealt her a far-too-heavy hand, and she was doing the best she could under the circumstances.

" _You're doing the best you can."_

Wayward voices in the dark of her mind. Her head shook. She needed sleep.

It didn't matter what Wanda thought. She was a doctor-there were always risks. Yes, the chances of error were elevated, but the guilt was worth the lives rescued by her skill. With low staff-to-patient ratios, a burnt-out medical team, and the number of emergency room check-ins increasing at an alarming rate (what on earth was happening to her city?), the hospital needed her now, more than ever.

None of them really had a choice.

Scratching down the numbers of the follow-up phone-calls she needed to make that evening, she tidied up a few more items, checked the lights, and then headed out the door.

Taking the long way, she wove through the labyrinth of hospital hallways, past the older corridors and the maintenances rooms, and into the elevator of the staff-only parking garage. She pressed the button to the top floor, and crossed her arms against the chilly rush of air outside.

The sight of the green car still surprised her. She looked past it with a heady sigh, her eyes drifting up into the sky. The stars were already out, blanketing the blue-and-purple ether with smatterings of pixie dust. Scanning the cold-white patterns, she caught sight of the constellation Orion the hunter, son of the sea. Something about it made her feel…abandoned.

Flashes in her mind: _Orion. Hunter. Green eyes burning with guilt. Her son with a sword and armor_. Romeo and Juliet, she thought, it must be. Violent delights, violent ends. _A deep British voice. Her son's cry of pain._

" _Forgive me."_.

Her hand flew to her neck as a jolt of pain shot through it.

A voice. Hers. _"My side, it hurt's…why?"_

"Why?" she whispered aloud as the pain faded, the scent of cigarette smoke jolting her out of her thoughts.

No, the smoke was sweet. A flavored cigar. Cherries in the night.

Blue eyes shot up to see a figure in the distance. Barely, beneath the safety lamps, she could make out a stout form in a long coat, fedora-capped and staring at her with intent.

Reaching into her purse, she palmed the botte of perfume she kept tucked away inside. It wasn't pepper spray, but it would provide her with some sort of deterrent. In any case, the glass could be broken, and used as a rudimentary weapon.

Scurrying toward her car, she kept her eye on the shadowed man. As she eyed the ignition, a thought swept through her, and she put the car in drive. Swinging the car around, she beamed the lights in the direction of where the man was standing.

But no one was there. Quickly, she mashed the accelerator and circled around again before making a bee-line for the exit ramp.

All the way around and down, she scanned the area. Nothing. No trace of anyone. Where could he possibly have gone?

The smell of sweet smoke lingered in her nostrils, tart and unforgiving. She turned up the notch for the AC control, switching it to vent from the outside and wondered if she was going mad.

***  
A quick jot to the nearest 24-hour grocery mart turned into a forty-five minute endeavor. With only one check-out lane open, she'd been forced to wait behind a clip-and-save shopper who must have horded several months' worth of coupons before deciding on that fateful night to dole them out into the world. The manager had already been summoned. Twice. And the cash register had all but blown it's circuits before Barbara finally made it to the cashier-an androgynous figure with, thin, lanky features, who exchanged with her a tired look before ushering out an apology.

"It happens," she'd said, surprised that she had kept her cool throughout the entire process, surprised, too by how green the cashier's eyes were.

"You're very patient," the cashier offered, eyeing her scrubs "must need that kind of attitude at your job. You a nurse?"

"Doctor," she corrected, used to the misstep. "The nurses probably get it worse than I do, but yeah, it can be stressful. Are you on the night shift tonight?"

"Till 7am," the green eyes rolled, "boss likes to keep a light shift-wants me to re-stock the entire store while manning the register. Greedy business tactics if you ask me, but hey, it's a job."

A flash of tan caught her periphery, and she looked over just in time to see a buggy being pushed by a figure in a long trench-coat as he ducked around the corner. Her eyes shifted to the convex security mirror tucked into the corner of the ceiling.

A cold tremor trickled down her spine as she realized that the figure was staring right back at her. It walked backwards down the baking aisle, the hollow pools of its sockets reflecting red like the back of a dog's eye, seemed almost to glow. Beneath the hat and the eyes, there loomed a sickening grin.

"Hey, Ma'am? Doctor? Hey, are you okay?" Distantly a voice called to her. She felt as though she was being sucked in by those eyes.

"Yo, yo, are you in there? " She heard a snapping noise in the air and shot to attention, her eyes coming to focus o the cashier's fingers as they clicked in front of her.

"S-sorry," she blurted out, and looked at the total on the screen: $39.45.

"Are you alright? Is that guy some sort of threat?" he green eyes looked concerned as they bagged the last of the groceries in a paper sack.

"I don't—no, here." She handed over a fifty dollar bill, shaking her head. "Keep the change."

Rushing out the door, she made it safely to her car. No one else left the mart before she did, and nothing followed her home.

By the time she pulled into her neighborhood, her eyes were fighting to stay open. She squinted against the dense, yellow glow of the too-bright street lights, grateful when the garage door finally closed and plunged her into darkness. Hands shaking with fatigue, she struggled to pull the keys out of the ignition. God, she needed sleep.

Before the urge to lay back could win her over, she opened the door, grabbed the grocery bags, and got out. Trudging into the house, she dropped the bags near the pantry, and shielded her eyes against the glow of the television screen-the only ambient light within the household. She almost thought to call out for Jim, but stopped herself.

It never got easier. It never would, she thought as she bit back the sting in her eyes.

Swallowing, she found her voice. "Toby?"

They'd moved Toby to her house, temporarily, until his grandmother was out of rehab.

No response. She switched the light on and stepped into the living room, only to find the child in question asleep on the couch, a strange, glowing rock-toy bumping up and down on his stomach as he breathed rhythmically in and out.

A small, fond smile broke across her features, and she bent low, taking hold of the rock before it dropped onto the floor. No doubt, he's been distracting himself with the monotony of cartoon reruns to take his mind off of his missing friend. Putting the rock onto the table, she brushed her hand through the boy's thick bundle of orange hair.

"Toby, hey, sweetie, it's time to go to bed."

Toby's nose scrunched up, and he tried to swat her hand away. "No mole, your moves are beautiful," he muttered through a haze.

She snorted and shook him again,

"Gun Robot says wake up." She said in the best robot voice she could muster.

Without warning, she was in another time, arms and legs sticking out like a zombie's as she watched her son run away from her in his little sock feet. He scurried up the staircase and into his room down the hall.

" _I am gun robot"_ she said again in a robot voice, kicking the door gently with her foot. Beneath the comforter, she spied a wiggling ball of giggles as he tried to hide from her.

" _Where arrre youuuu?"_ The scary voice continued as she poked and prodded at the bed. _"Gotcha!"_ she said, and grabbed the squealing lump into her arms. Flipping him over, she exposed him beneath the hulking fabric, and pulled his socks off with one hand as she tickled the soles of his feet.

"Hey, Dr. L, I'm awake now, you can stop shaking me." The voice echoed from far away.

Her son giggled raucously as he tried to get away. _"Destroy all humans."_ She roared again, blowing raspberries into his stomach as he shrieked with glee.

"Earth to Dr. L." the voice called again.

Squirming in her arms, Jim continued to laugh, even after she let him take a breath of air. Smiling she kissed him on the forehead.

" _Mommy, do Gun Robot again."_

"Dr. L!"

In an instant, she was back in the present, vision coming into focus as she stared into the corner of the room. Her eyes flicked to Toby's, whose worried gaze told her all she needed to know about what had just occurred.

"Sorry, Toby," she let go of her grip on his shoulder. "I got lost in a memory."

"About Jim?"

"Yeah," her lip tugged up, almost sheepish with the truth. Her face wanted to frown, and the lump in her throat hurt her physically, but she wouldn't let any of it show.

"Hey, did you get dinner yet?" she said, trying to distract both herself and Toby. "Sorry it took me so long to get here, I got caught up at the grocery store."

"I may have knocked out some of your cheese puffs earlier but, otherwise no."

Smiling, she tucked her fatigue away. "How about lasagna and green beans, hmm?" At her next word's, her palms rose in surrender. "I promise none of it is going to be homemade."

Sometime later, she took the bubbling dish of lasagna out of the oven, and prepared Toby a plate. They ate with relative mirth, mostly staying on the topic of school, and Toby's studies.

The school, it turned out, had held a moment of silence that day for Jim, as well as the two principals who had gone missing over the spring. Counselors had been made available to speak to, but Toby explained that they had been altogether unhelpful.

"What about Mr. Blinky? You guys really seemed to like him."

"He hasn't been around. I think he retired."

Her brows creased. "Didn't he just get hired?"

"Yeah, Principal Strickler didn't really like him. Kind of a forced thing."

Before she could asked more, he abruptly excused himself to go "study his rock". "Geology projects, am I right?" he shrugged as he backed away.

"Yeah, sure," she said, fork hovering in the air half-way through her meal.

She watched him grab the rock and scurry upstairs, perplexed by his antics. For the time being, he was using her room as his sleeping quarter, while she used the master bedroom downstairs—a room she'd abandoned shortly after her husband left. Jim's room remained empty, and just as he had left it: tidy, clean, and with only a few stray books left open for his studies.

Everything, in fact, had been spotless the night she came home from the hospital. Even the refrigerator, strangely, seemed to work better than before, and no longer carried the scratches and dens it had acquired over time. She chalked it up to Jim having gotten himself into yet another repair project. She remembered how much it reminded her of the "last meal" he'd cooked after getting arrested. Something about it was…too much, overdone, as though he were trying to make up for something. It was the first clue she'd received that something might be amiss.

That night, she'd searched the house, called him, drove around town, and even tried to contact Jim's father before she finally contacted the police-Toby hadn't answered his phone, neither had Claire, and her parents panicked with the effort to find her. Claire's father in partial had been especially angry, lashing out at her for her lack of control over Jim. Everything that could have gone wrong did, and in the resulting frenzy only two of the tree missing children managed to appear.

Their only explanation? That they'd been searching for Jim themselves.

After that, search teams, cadaver dogs, and rescue helicopters had been dispatched into a great hunt.

To both her relief and anguish, no one ever found him.

The rest of her meal went untouched. Her eyes clenched at the image on a body being found, and her hand flew to her stomach. Tasting bile, she all but flew into the downstairs bathroom as she began to gag and retch.

She clung to the toilet like a lifeline, tears streaming out with her vomit, until it seemed that an entire week's worth of food had been emptied from her body.

Retching one last time, she pulled a cloth off of the towel rack and rolled back against the wall, wiping her face as she sobbed.

"My baby boy," she whispered as she rocked herself back and forth, wishing beyond hope that he'd come bouncing around the corner with those vibrant eyes of his.

It was minutes before she finally got up, rinsed off, and went back into the kitchen to clean.

Barely into scrubbing the first dish, the doorbell rang. As she dried her hands, she wiped away the last of her tears.

Behind the door stood a man in uniform, Detective Brennan, one of two officers chiefly assigned to guide her through the case.

"Detective Brennan, right on time," she managed through the lump in her throat.

"I try to be Ms. Lake," he said, taking off his hat. "Hey, do you have a cold? You sound congested."

"Yeah, something like that."

"Well, you're not the only one. As you've probably noticed, it's just me tonight; Detective Allan is out with the flu."

Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn't been the other way around. Where Detective Brennan was calm and level-headed, his partner was his complete opposite—wisecracking, hyper, and utterly and completely a flirt. She wondered how he ever stayed focused on his tasks.

"That's unfortunate," she said, not really meaning it. "Come, in."

"Is that Domzalski kid still staying here?" He said, looking around as he entered.

"He's upstairs studying, probably asleep by now. His grandmother should be out in about two weeks."

"Yeah, he tried to pull a fast one on me a few months ago." He spoke as he followed her into the living room. "Something about having no bones. Kid's a real trickster, y'know. Likes playing hooky. Watch out for that."

Snorting half-heartedly, she folded her arms. "Yeah, I don't think he's going to be able to use that excuse on me."

"How have you been feeling?" he said, jumping into a more serious tone.

The doctor sighed through her stuffy nose, tired of the question. "There's really not a good way to answer that."

"Have you been able to get in contact with the boy's father?"

She shook her head, and looked down. James Sr. was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to

"All attempts made by our office have been unsuccessful We've established a relationship with the Lamoille County Police Department in Stowe, Vermont. There's a lady named Susan who works as a waitress at the local ski resort, said she dated him until about five years back. According to her, he's still in the area, but he only comes around every month or so to see his kid."

"Kid?" her brows furrowed.

"Yeah, she has three of them, but the oldest one's his. Little girl, about seven years old." He paused for a moment, seeming to realize the gravity of what he had just said. "You…didn't know?"

"No, I didn't." her hand slid down her face. Well, that explained why he had trouble paying child support.

"In any case," the officer continued, "it'll lead us closer to him. The LCPD says they think they'll have him tracked down and in for questioning by the end of the week. The running theory is that he has a cabin tucked away in the mountains. Hopefully it will give us a clue as to where your son might have gone."

"I just don't know if Jim would have done something like that. I mean, yeah, he was having issues with his father, and his guidance counselor was working to help him through that, but," she placed a hand on her forehead, "he promised me a while back—the night after he and Toby broke into the museum, in fact-that he would never leave me by choice. At the time, I thought he was just feeling guilty about what he had done, but something about the way he said it scared me. I mean, it was just completely out of the blue."

"Yeah, well, you know how it is at that age. It's easy to make promises you can't keep."

"Jim has always stuck to his word." She looked at the officer pointedly, and with offense. "Every time he acted out against me, I could tell that he felt bad. It was almost as though the situation really was out of his control."

"Do you think he was trying to, maybe, protect you from something?"

She looked up to the ceiling, shaking her head. In her mind, she scanned through the memories: the shame, the lies, the late nights spent worrying whether or not Jim was going to make it home safe and sound. "I just don't know."

The detective jotted down a few notes, and then cleared his throat as he looked up to her. "Now, I know this seems to be an uncomfortable subject for you but, I wanted to talk to you about this teacher of his again. Walter Strickler. Both he and your ex-husband are competing for top place on our list of suspects."

"Ok, go ahead."

He looked up at her, trying to read her eyes. "We've interviewed a few of your coworkers. The reports suggest that the two of you were closer than what we were originally led to believe. Now, a lot of times people get overwhelmed during the first phase of a traumatic loss and their memory gets a little jostled. Now that we're a few weeks into the investigation, I wanted to ask you again. Are you, or have you at any point, been involved with Mr. Walter Strickler?"

Without hesitation, she shook her head. "No, he came over for tea once, near the beginning of the school year, to congratulate Jim on landing a role in the school play, and to meet with me about his concerns regarding Jim's performance in class, but that's it."

"And didn't you think that this was odd?"

"Well, a little," she balled her fists into her lap, "but I could never find the time to drop by for a meeting, and he'd been trying to get in contact with me for a while. I guess he decided to bring the parent-teacher conference to me. It made sense. Jim really was having a hard time in class-in all his classes, really, and he'd been hiding it from me. I didn't really know what was going on until that night."

"And did your son demonstrate any strange behaviors while he was there?"

"He seemed a little inconvenienced…maybe a bit nervous-he really looked up to the guy, and it's always strange at that age to see that your teacher outside of school—but there wasn't any indication that he felt uncomfortable or scared. We just had a discussion about Jim's performance in class, and then Mr. Strickler left. That was the last time I saw him."

"That doesn't really add up. School started back in January. Your coworkers reported seeing you with him at the hospital as late April."

Her teeth clenched. "Well, it's not true. Some of my coworkers, especially Jeanine, have been trying to hook me up with someone for years," she gestured to the air. "I never really had the time outside of my job and Jim. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on their part."

The detective nodded, and then jotted something onto the notepad.

"Why am I being asked all of these questions about him?"

He didn't look up. "We do as much as we can to rule everyone off of the list."

Her heart skipped a beat as she registered the words, then a hand flew to her chest. "You mean I'm…they think I…?"

"It's just a precaution, ma'am" he explained, "no one really thinks—"

"Detective Brennan, I would _never_ harm my son," she interrupted him with narrowed eyes, voice filled with vehemence.

The man flashed his palms, "Hey, look, I believe you but we have to get through the paperwork, okay?"

Shaking, she tried to find her resolve against the veiled accusation. "I'm not hiding anything. I'm not trying to protect this guy from the police, or anyone else. I just my son back and I'll do anything, tell you anything, to see that happen, do you understand that?"

"I do, ma'am, I have a kid now myself. Just try to answer to the best of your knowledge, okay?"

Glistening with tears, her eyes sparkled in the light, "okay. "

The interview went on. The entire time, she fretted over her position as a suspect. To be seen as an agent of harm in his life felt vile. She'd always sought to protect him, and to keep him safe. More than anything, she felt like retching again, but she kept her composure. Finally, the conversation slowed, and the detective's words trailed off.

"Listen, detective. I've had a very long night, so if there's nothing else that we need to discuss…"

Detective Brennan was already rising from the couch. "Way ahead of you. Gotta get back to the station to finish this report, then on to the wife so she can get some sleep. The baby's been keeping her up most nights-got diaper rash like you wouldn't believe. Nothing seems to work, not even that 'Nystatin' stuff the doctor prescribed. "

"Try athlete's foot cream," She said in a beat, not even realizing that she was switching the power dynamics of the room. Now he was the one in the hot seat, only a patient, not an overseer. "butenafine hydrochloride. I am not joking, it will clear that right up."

"Well, I guess you would know," he said with a smile as he let himself out of the door. "I'll try it. Good luck until next time, okay?"

She waved through the doorway as he walked out to his patrol car, and then paused, her face running white as she looked past him and to the red eyes gleaming in the tree-line behind him.

"You okay Ma'am?" he said, pausing.

"Who is that?" she asked, peering past him and into the trees beyond.

The officer turned around and pulled the flashlight off his belt. He pointed the beam toward the tree line, stepping closer as he waited for a rustle in the leaves.

"Nothing there now, Ma'am," he said after a few moments. "probably a raccoon."

She barely responded, granting him an empty nod as she continued to fix her gaze along the dark mass of trees beyond. When he finally drove away, she closed the door and headed upstairs.

Toby was fast asleep in the room with the rock beside him. She took it, placed it on the table, and then pulled the comforter over him before heading to Jim's room.

Opening it slowly, she blinked into the cavernous space. Inhaling deeply, she took in the familiar scents: the deodorant he wore, the smell of printed books, the waft old leather sports balls that he'd worn to the thread. All of it swirled and mixed into her memory.

Walking to his desk, she looked out of the window to where she'd seen the figure in the trees. For a long time, nothing moved, but then she saw a rustle, and another glint of red.

Gasping, she stepped back, and then shook her head. Maybe it was all just in her head—a product of fatigue and lack of sleep.

Glancing down, she saw that her hand had landed on top of Jim's history book. She sat of his bed and opened it, leafing through the pages: an old test, 72%, with a "you can do better, Young Atlas" scribbled beside the numbers, some doodles, the word "Claire" written in cursive several times along the page with a smiley face. None of it seemed out of the ordinary. Whatever role her son's teacher had played in her life, she couldn't remember it. Maybe she really was going insane.

Then the section on Napoleon appeared. _Changeling. Mom. Danger._ An angry face loomed beside the clump of words.

She smoothed her hand across the words.

"Changeling," she whispered the word aloud, and felt her memory trying to tug her somewhere.

"What does this mean, Jim?" She creased the page and leafed through the next few. Nothing.

Closing the book, she lay on her side and hugged it, wondering why she couldn't conjure up the thing that tugged and scratched at the back of her mind. Trapped. That's what it felt like, like something was trapped.

Out the window, the stars twinkled above. Hazily, she made out the belt and arms of the constellation Orion, the same one she'd seen when the man in the trench coat had first appeared.

 _Hunter_ she thought as she blinked at the three stars composing the belt. The "Three Kings" her father had always said.

Blue eyes looked to the constellation globe on his desk. The side facing her had Orion on it. She smiled, thinking Jim had probably positioned it that way on purpose.

"I'll find you," she whispered as her eyes grew heavy, breath and body slowing with the need to rest. "I promise."

Finally, the world faded away.


	4. The Man in the Trenchcoat

The next morning, Barbara woke with a heavy heart. She showered, dressed, and got ready, all the while feeling like she was miles away from her own reality. She'd just finished pinning her hair when her nose scrunched up to the smell of pre-frozen waffles burning in the toaster. Bolting. She ran downstairs, glasses half-askew as she quickly scanned the kitchen for signs of smoke.

"Happy Saturday, Dr. L!" Toby shouted, as he shoved a half-black waffle onto his plate and fanned the toaster with an oven mitt. Her shoulders sagged with relief. "Sorry about the smell, it only burnt a little."

"I see you're up early," she smiled as she eyed the clock. "You ready to go see your Nana? She doesn't have PT until noon, so we can get a good visit in if we leave soon."

"Yeah!" He shouted through his food, downing half the pastry in two bites. "You want some? It's chocolate chiiiip," he tried to goad her.

"No, thanks," she patted her stomach, "I didn't have a good night with the lasagna."

"Suit yourself," he licked his fingers as he finished it. "Hey do you mind if Claire comes with us to the rehab center? We're working on a school project together and I could really use her input. Gotta start the beginning the year off right!"

"Not at all," The Doctor said as she reached into a cabinet to grab a water bottle, and then filled it. "I'd love to speak with her, actually."

"Rad," he said as he tapped at his phone, "she'll be here in, like, ten minutes. Mr. Nunez is gonna drop her off on his way to work."

"Ok, well, while we're waiting, why don't you help me change the porch light?" Her smile was warm. "I was going to do it later but, now that we're both just standing here…"

"Listen, I answer every call Dr. L," he stuck a hand in the air and counted off with his finger, "If you've got grass cutting, toilet plunging, rabid knomes…I'm your guy."

Strands of red hair bounced as she chuckled and shook her head. "The ladder's in the garage. I'll go get the bulb."

Ten minutes later, Toby stepped off of the last rung of the ladder, which Barbara kept steady, and dusted off his hands.

"Yeah, go team!" he shouted and gave the doctor a high-five.

The rumble of an engine caught their attention.

"Hey Toby, Dr. Lake," Claire said as she walked up to them, waving goodbye to her father. "You guys need any help?"

"We're just finishing up." The doctor smiled as she folded the ladder. Toby, with the typical zeal of his youth, took it from her, leaving the woman and girl alone as he headed to the garage.

For a moment, silence reigned as the Barbara looked down at her guest. Despite the springtime glow of her adolescence, the girl looked tired, weary from hours of fretting and fear. Barbara could only imagine how hard all of this had been soon her. The pangs of loss were something to be expected in adulthood, but to the young, it always came as a surprise—a searing shock that burned itself into the caverns of juvenile memory forever.

"Can I," the teenager paused, seemingly taken aback by the doctor's gaze. "May I," she corrected herself, "talk with you alone? Later, y'know, when Toby's not around."

"Yes, of course," she said, placing a hand on the teenager's shoulder. "I'd love the opportunity. We haven't really gotten a chance to speak with each other since…well, since Jim went missing."

Claire's brown eyes smiled back at her, before they both turned at the sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs. A few seconds later, they thudded back downward and a breathless Toby appeared, glowing rock in hand as he jutted it out for them to see. "Almost forgot Rocky. That would have been bad news, real bad, right Claire?"

"Where would we be without your pet rock?" the girl said as she rolled her eyes.

Amid the bickering, Barbara managed to herd them off the porch and back through the house to the garage. Jim's jacket hung by the exit, and she smoothed a hand over it before locking the door.

Halfway over the bridge, she was in mid conversation when she saw it.

"You know, the one thing is I just don't understand is what Mr. Strickler has to do with all of—"

A flash of red caught her periphery and her eyes went wide. My god, she thought, not while she was with the kids.

"Doctor Lake?"

"She keeps doing this," she heard Toby whisper, "You okay Dr. L?"

Ignoring them, she squinted to where she'd seen the flash. There. A shadow of a man, round fedora on his head. She changed lanes to distance the car from him, and jammed her foot on the accelerator.

By the time they reached the passing point, she looked over. Nothing was there—no man with the devil's eyes.

"Blinky warned us that something like this might happen," Claire's voice came into focus, "and now Jim's mom is turning into a space cadet! What are we supposed to do?"

"I'm _fine_ ," she said, looking back at them through the rear view mirror, "and I thought Mr. Blinky had retired."

They gave her sheepish looks.

Once at the rehab center, things calmed down again. With Toby and Claire chatting away with Mrs. Domzalski,, she took a moment to walk around the complex. It was a beautiful facility, one geared towards rehabilitating senior citizens, boasting the latest equipment and nice, cozy rooms to keep the patients feeling as though they were at home.

It certainly lived up to the commercials she had seen. Walking through the entertainment center felt mind boggling. The room was extensive, with pool tables, chessboards, televisions, and even a small theater down the hallway. She kept her arms crossed as she walked around, leaning in to examine one of the paintings on the wall.

"Oh, hello dear. Nice to see you again." A voice creaked up from behind her. "It's really a shame what happened to Walter. He was such a nice man."

Turning around, she caught sight of old lady staring up at her with watery expectation, and blinked. "I'm sorry, I think you might have mistaken me for someone else."

"Oh, no dear I never forget a face. Especially a redhead. My mother was a redhead, you know, and so was I, before I had white hair."

The doctor shook her head, dismissing her own confusion. "How long have you been a patient here?"

"Good gracious, it's not me. I'm here to see my husband, Charles." She pointed to a cluster of elderly patients sitting at a table near the door. "He's the one with the red sweater and the cast on his leg. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's almost four years ago, now."

"That must be difficult for both of you."

"Oh yes, it very much is, but we manage with the small things. Even if he doesn't recognize me in person, he remembers our times together. It's enough for me."

A smile cracked its way through her lips, though she didn't know what to say. "So," her hand found the back of her neck, "we're you a patient of mine, at some point, or…?"

"No, it was the elevator, dear. I'm afraid I interrupted a moment between you and…well, maybe he's a touchy subject. You know, I never got your name."

"Lake," she extended her hand, "Dr. Barbara Lake."

"Wonderful," the elderly woman's grip felt soft and cool to the touch, "and what are you a Doctor of?"

"Emergency care," she let the hand go.

The lady's eyes wrinkled with humor. "That boy always did have good taste."

Her eyes shot up. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing, nothing." She waived a hand. "Just an old lady prattling on. Listen, I'd love to have you over for tea sometime." The older woman said as she began to rifle through her purse. "With my neighbor gone, I haven't really had any company to speak of. Everyone else there is so, well, old," she laughed.

"Are you sure it's me you remember, Mrs-?"

"Mrs. Presgrit, dear."

Something niggled at the edge of her mind.

"Presgrit," she repeated, letting the word roll on her tongue. "You know, something about that _does_ sound familiar. This, neighbor you mentioned, Walter. Did you know his last name?"

"Oh," she made a face, "you two must not have known each other very well. I never really took him as the Casanova type, but I guess we all have our assumptions. It was Strickler, dear. Walter Strickler and he was a fine young lad. I don't believe a thing they say in the papers. "

A quick scan of her memory brought a date to mind: the next day off on her schedule. "How does Wednesday sound?"

Barbara dropped Toby off at her house. "I've got to run by my office to do some paperwork." She explained to the boy's confused look. "I'll drop Claire off on the way there. There's some leftover chicken in the fridge, and a box of pizza bites in the freezer. Sorry, I haven't had time to pick up any veggies."

"Bleh, who wants those anyways?" Toby remarked, "I'll see you two later. Don't forget about our meeting tomorrow, Claire." He pointed at the younger girl, "6pm sharp, by the gate to troll—the trolley station."

"We don't have a trolley station, Toby," Claire crossed her arms.

"Did I say trolley? I meant folly, which is short for foliage, and we're going to see a lot of that at the...park! Where we are meeting, Tomorrow. To discuss the project." He cleared his throat. "Park. 6pm. Don't be late."

The doctor made a face

"You are so weird." Claire said, before rolling up the window.

Barbara made sure that he got into the house before driving away.

"I don't know how you live with him," Claire remarked after a few moments of silence.

The doctor spared a moment to look away from the windshield. "He's a quirky kid, but it's not so bad. Better than being in that house alone."

"Well," the girl nodded, sounding nervous. "I guess I can see that."

"This must be hard on you," she said as she turned onto the main roadway. "We haven't had a chance to talk since Jim was in the hospital. You stayed by his side all night. Thank you, by the way. The two of you must have been close."

"Yeah, I really miss him." The girl looked down. "We were…just starting to get to know each other better."

The sound of the road beneath the tires was fraying. Hesitation overcame her, but she asked:

"That night you guys were in the forest. Jim wouldn't tell me the truth." The doctor pulled over in a lot by the park. "Do you know what really happened?"

"I," she looked into the Doctor's eyes, then sighed. "I don't want to lie to you, Dr. Lake, you deserve the truth. There were some bad guys that night. I don't really know who they were, or how they knew Jim, but he found out they were going to try to attack my parents' house and came to warn me. My mom's a member of the city council, you know, so it was probably something political. Jim said he didn't want you to know about them, that I had to keep it a secret."

"And you've been holding it in all this time?"

Claire nodded, the rainbow clips in her hair swaying with the movement.

"Is what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"I just wanted you to know that your son is a really good person, Dr. Lake. What he did, he did for the right reasons. I hope you know that, because there are a lot of people saying otherwise," said Claire

A shadow passed behind the doctor's eyes, sadness overwhelming the intensity of her frozen gaze. "Thank you. I know I couldn't have asked for a better child, or a better friend for my son." She smiled a small smile.

Silence reigned for a moment, and then, whatever anguish Claire had been holding in, finally broke out.

"I'm so sorry that we lied to you," she shook her head, her eyes watering. "I never wanted this to happen, and I feel like it's my fault. Like he did all this to protect my family, to protect _me_ , and I never would have condoned the idea of him trying to be some lone vigilante. I wish he had talked to me before he disappeared." She balled her fists together. "I would have told him how I felt. "

"Oh, honey," she unbuckled her seatbelt, and wrapped her arms around the girl. "Listen, it's not your fault."

"I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." Barbara held the girl tighter, her own eyes threatening tears.

If anything, Barbara thought to herself, it was her own fault. For not being there enough, for not paying closer attention, for not listening when he needed her the most. My god, she'd been so selfish. It was so easy to lose track of time with her job, and with the fatigue she constantly battled. Being an emergency care physician meant being "on call" for the patients, for the hospital, for everyone all the time, and she'd been so busy taking care of the world, that she hadn't had enough time to take care of her son.

And she tried, yes—she ran herself ragged with her attempts to be there for him, often foregoing sleep or food just to be available, but in the end, it hadn't been enough.

"I just want him to come home." Claire sobbed into the doctor's shoulder.

This time, she couldn't prevent her own shuddering breath as she pulled Claire closer, rocking back and forth while the tears streamed down her face. She didn't have the answers. None of them did, and it was far too late to fix the past.

On Tuesday evening, an answer came, though only half of one, and not in the way she would have expected.

As usual, it had been a busy evening in the ER. Barbara had been rushing around from patient to patient, doling out orders to the nurses and residents as the situation required. A broken arm here, a runny nose there, a sawed off finger, two OD's, some heart attacks, objects in places they shouldn't have been stuck, car accidents, chest infections, unexpected pregnancies, burns—everything, even a tiger bite on a caretaker from the local zoo (that one had her interested, and it tickled something at the back of her mind, something long forgotten).

She'd just finished ordering a rabies series for the latter (just in case), and had changed out her soiled scrubs (the big cat had managed hit an artery) when she finally got to one of the less urgent patents on the list. One of the difficult things about her position was having to prioritize patients. The patient in the next room had been waiting for a while, and she steeled herself against his probable annoyance.

Exhausted, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath before made her way down the hall.

Opening the door and drawing back the curtain, she entered the small room, adjusting her glasses as she smiled apologetically at the figure sitting on the hospital bed-a round man with green eyes that peered at her through circular spectacles. He had a pleasant enough look about him, and seemed relatively healthy in light if his attendance at the hospital. A hat and coat, along with his shoes, had been tucked into the guest chair at the corner of the room.

"Hallo," he said with an obvious accent, waving at her when she stepped inside.

"I'm sorry you've been waiting so long, Mr. Scaarbach," she said, hoping she had pronounced his name correctly. "It's been an incredible evening and things are a little backed up. How are you feeling?"

"It was worth the wait. You are the lady in the news, ja? I have read about you in the paper."

The words stopped her for a moment. She blinked, and cleared her throat.

"Mr. Scaarbach, if you don't mind, I would prefer it if we focused on your symptoms. The notes I have here say you've been feeling faint, can you tell me a little more about that?"

"Ah yes, very faint. And my skin, it has been…itchy. Like it wants to _change._ "

"Well, that's a new one." She blinked, wondering at the strange smile he wore, "I know the nurse has already gone over this with you, but do you have any known allergies? Sometimes people get so distracted by this environment, or how they feel, that they don't remember the first time they're asked."

"I'm allergic to liars, and cheats." His expression went devilish.

If it was humor he was going for, she wasn't laughing. "I think we're all little allergic to those," she offered a placating line, "any nausea, sweating, hot flashes, extreme fatigue? Anything like that?"

"Sag mir wo Herr Strickler ist."

Immediately, the air changed within the room. Danger. "Excuse me?"

"You are hiding him."

The air conditioning switched on, and she caught the heavy scent of cigarettes wafting off his coat. No, cigars. Cherry.

"Do I…know you?" she asked, squinting into the light.

"Nein, Frau Lake. But I know you, and I have reason to believe that you have information regarding his whereabouts."

"Whose whereabouts?"

"Our former leader, Lord Stricklander."

The blue of her eyes narrowed. Undoubtedly, he'd seen her case on the news. "Listen, I don't know what kind of prank you're trying to pull here, Mr. Scarrbach, but it's not funny. There are people here whose lives are on the line."

"Das ist kein Trick, Frau Lake-"

"I'm a doctor, buddy." she sneered, knowing enough of the language to catch the misstep.

"Ja, ja, du bist eine Ärztin. Doktor Lake, then." Rolling his eyes, he stood from the examination bed, and began to circle the room with clasped hands. "This is no trick. And if you ever want to see your son again, then you will help us."

"My son?" She said as she pulled back and grasped her clipboard, her eyes widening. "You, you have him?"

"Nein, aber we are on the hunt for him, and when we find him, he will have much to answer for. Der Führer has promised to show leniency in the event that you give us the information that we require."

 _The parking garage._ The memory of his scent hurtled back into her mind. "You've been following me," she said, rolling her chair back toward the door. "The parking deck, the store, the trees, the bridge…that was you."

"Ah, ah, ah," he chided, waggling a finger at her as he stepped on one of the chair's wheels. "The security guards on staff tonight are all my agents," his lips twisted into a disturbing smile. "You will find no protection from within these walls."

"Agents of what?" Blue eyes followed his every movement, turning her chair as he circled her.

"You would like to know, ja?" He laughed. "I suppose Herr Stickler did not tell you about that little plan of his, did he?."

"Why does everyone keep mentioning his name? I barely knew the guy!"

The man paused, momentarily taken aback. "Perhaps the rumors are true." He said, "Perhaps they did lösche dein Gedächtnis."

 _Pretentious,_ she thought toward his tendency to switch languages. It was evident that he was fluent in both. "I _don't_ understand what you are saying."

He continued his arc, seeming to ignore her. "This could work," his voice oozed out. "This could be used to our advantage."

Vying for his attention, she stood up. "If you have anything to do with my son going missing, or coming to any harm, so help me, I will abandon every single oath I have sworn against medical malpractice and will render you completely unable to function, do you understand?"

"You are a feisty one," he chuckled, folding his hands behind his back, "I can see why my former comrade took to you so quickly. It is really quite adorable."

Growling, she reached into a counter drawer, pulled out a long pair of forceps, lunged forward, and grabbed him by the septum all within a matter of seconds.

The doctor's blue eyes burned with the heat of a methane fire as she glared at him. "you know, there are a lot of nerves in that area." She said as he cried out in pain. "And the cartilage," she sucked in a mocking breath, "ouch."

Her grip tightened when he reached for his nose.

Locking the forceps into place, she gripped the makeshift weapon with both hands. "Go ahead and try to tug it off, be my guest. No one's going to realize that your screaming is abnormal, and then you'll _really_ have a reason to be here."

"Ach! Lass mich los! Schau! Look!" He squealed, losing all of his clout. "We can help you!"

Tugging the forceps, her lips became a thin line. "How?" she demanded.

"We all wish to locate your son, Doktor. Believe me. And we have eyes and ears that extend far beyond the range of your limited law enforcement. In us, you may find an ally."

"Oh, yes, I'm sure that you're really looking out for the kids. What, are you part of some drug cartel or something, an illegal business trade? C'mon."

"Nein, nein," he flashed his palms in submission. "A global organization. Your son has been meddling in our affairs. Unser Anführer only wants for him to stop. If you help us, we will help you. Verstehen Sie?"

"And you want me to, what? Help you find my son's teacher? What does he have to do with all of this?"

"He is the reason we were not able to stop your son sooner. This entire situation has gotten far out of hand. Your son thinks that we are on the bad side of his cause, aber wirklich, we are only trying to help! He is more than just your son's teacher, Doktor, and soon, he will be a danger to us all."

Pausing for a moment, she tried to make sense of the situation. Although dubious in nature and purposefully kept exempt of all details, the situation lent itself to validity. She'd received more information in the past two minutes than she had in the same number of months regarding the disappearance of her son. And he was right about the police—they had limits, paperwork, and protocols. Sometimes, in order to get things done, one had to act outside of the range of the law. Although she did not actively support such behavior, she could clearly see his point-if she wanted to catch her son alive, and in one piece, then she needed an outside agent.

In this strange way, she found herself caving to the wills of this intruder. "So what am I supposed to do? Send out an all-call for long lost history teachers? And how do I know you're not just lying to me to get to my son?"

"You don't know," he admitted, "but if we wanted to harm you, we could have. We know where you live, we clearly know where you work, and have for some time. You were forced to get a new vehicle after your son went away. Funny that they found Herr Strickler's car in a ditch, on the exact same night yours went missing. Coincidence?"

She set her jaw.

"Either way you will want to see your son, ja? So why not take the chance. Wir brauchen Sie. We need you, to bait Strickler, draw him out. You may not remember him, but I can assure you that he will remember you. Ja, ja," he seemed to laugh to himself, "you were his little Schatzi, a secret obsession."

Her brow cocked, then hardened. "Why is he so important to you?"

In her pocket, her phone started to vibrate. Someone was beginning to wonder where she was. One of her hands let go if its death grip on the forceps, and she reached into her pocket to check. "I'm gonna need the short version."

"We have reason to believe that he has stolen a rare artifact, and might have given it to your son for safekeeping. Mein Chef very much wishes to have a little chat with him, und ist nearly blind with the ambition to find it."

"Your cook wants to talk to him because he lost an antique?" She made a disapproving face, "You know, you're really not selling yourself here."

"Nein, nein nein, ach, einschuldigung, wie sagt man "Chef" auf Englisch? 'My boss,' richtig? It is close to his heart."

"Who is he? And who is this 'we' you keep referring to?"

The phone buzzed again. They both heard it.

"Come by the fish market on Avery Straße, ja? To find out more. Ask for Freund Otto. Just like that. If you bring the authorities, I will know, and we will be long gone."

"Fine." She said after a long moment, and then let go of the forceps. Otto yelped and clutched at his now very red nose. Barbara drew back the curtain, which shielded the glass door behind it, and pointed toward his exit. "Get out of my ER."

When he hesitated, she stamped her foot down, and all but snarled. "Now."

Clutching at his nose, he ducked past her, grabbing his coat and shoes before he scurried away.

Only once he was out of the room and long into his trek down the hallway did she let her shoulders slump. Picking up his chart, she could feel herself shaking as she lifted her pen. REFUSED TREATMENT. She marked in, large capital letters, and then threw the clipboard to the ground.

The next day, she parked in the lot of Mrs. Presgrit's apartment complex, hands gripping white along the steering wheel. The building was open during the day, and the doctor floated into it like a ghost, ignoring the worried faces of the tenants she passed. She knew she looked pale, she knew she looked sick, she knew her face looked hollow and gaunt—dehydration, insomnia, malnutrition: the diagnoses ran like ticker-tape across her mind, but she couldn't stop. Not until she got closer to the truth. Not until she ran herself to the bone.

The elevator creaked as it ascended to the sixth floor, something about it smelled familiar, like she had been here in a dream.

When the bell chimed and the door opened, she almost stumbles out with how weak she felt. Counting out the doors, she made her way to the correct one.

The large, gold numerals loomed above her. "615," she whispered into the empty hall, checking it against the numbers she'd hastily scratched onto her notepad.

Everything lined up.

For the briefest moment, she hesitated. Afraid of what she would find out, or of what she wouldn't, but she was tired of tumbling down the rabbit hole. Resolutely, her hand rose to grasp the lion-faced knocker.

She rapped on the door, the thunder of it echoing down the hallway, and closed her pale and weary eyes.

German translations (in order of appearance):  
Ja - yes  
Sag mir wo Herr Strickler ist – tell me where Mr. Strickler is  
Nein, Frau Lake. – No, Ms. Lake (google translate will give you 'Fräulein' for Ms., but this is not modern use)  
Das ist kein Trick, Frau Lake – This is no trick, Ms. Lake  
Ja, ja, du bist eine Ärztin. - Yes, yes, you are a (female) doctor  
Doktor – German spelling of doctor  
Der Führer – The leader/guide  
Nein, aber – no, but  
lösche dein Gedächtnis – delete/erase your memory  
Ach! Lass mich los! Schau! – Ack, let me go! Look!  
Unser Anführer – our leader  
Verstehen Sie? – Do you understand?  
aber wirklich – but, really  
Wir brauchen Sie – We need you  
Schatzi – "little treasure" so he's really saying "little, little treasure"  
Mein Chef - my boss  
und ist – and is  
Nein, nein nein, ach, einschuldigung, wie sagt man "Chef" auf Englisch? My boss, richtig? – No, no, no, ahh, excuse me, how does one say 'Boss' in English? 'My boss,' correct?  
Avery Straße, ja? – Avery Street, yes?  
Ask for Freund Otto - Ask for friend Otto.


	5. Strawberries

The locked clicked and whined with age and rust, and a voice rose out from behind it.

"One moment, dear, this door is even more rickety than I am."

Barbara took her forehead off of the door. It wouldn't do to go tumbling into the poor old lady. It was her day off, after all, and having to run yet another elderly patient to the ER on her downtime would raise more than a few eyebrows. Not to mention, it would earn her another mark on the apparently growing list of reasons that she was involved in the disappearance of her son.

Never would she forget the cold trickle of dread that ran through the spine the moment the accusation had left Detective Brennan's lips. It wasn't so much for fear of her own life, as was her son's. How could they ever find him if they had the wrong leads?

They wouldn't—which was why Mr. Scaarbach's offer had moved to the front-lines of her consideration. Whatever waited for her at the fish market was bound to give her some sort of clue, to offer her a direction out of the mire of stagnation Jim's case had become. Even if Mr. Scaarbach hadn't counseled her against contacting the authorities, she wasn't sure she would have. They were dogs who had lost the scent, and could offer her nothing but a vacant jail-cell and a broken heart.

Shaking away the memory of the interview, she straightened her back and ran her tired fingers hand through her rust-coolored hair.

Whatever bind the door had gotten itself into seemed to mend itself beneath the guide of Mrs. Presgrit's insistent touch, and the handle turned. The door gave way, and she blinked into the well-lit interior of the apartment.

The first thing she noticed was that the carpet was blue—sky blue. The color of Jim's room when he was a baby.

The second thing she noticed was that the entrance smelled like

The third thing she noticed was that Mrs. Pregrit had a tea-tray in her hands, which was rapidly being transferred into her own reflexive grasp.

"Oh," she said, as she flexed against the weight of the silver burden, trying desperately not to spill its contents. "I don't have the greatest luck with ceramics."

"At eighty-four years old I'd wager that your luck was better than mine, dear," Mrs. Presgrit warbled with a smile. "It's been so long since I've been able to 'have a cuppa on the roof' as he used to call it. Life hasn't been as easy since he went away from here. I've had a hard time finding someone to help me out with the trash. There aren't many children here but there are certainly those who are more able in body. No one seems to have the time or patience for us old windbags anymore."

Barbara quirked a brow. "You're talking about Walter?"

"Yes, yes. Oh, is it still a bad subject? We don't have to talk about him, dear."

The lady ushered her back toward the elevator. She shook her head as the doors closed in on them. "No, talking about him is actually part of the reason I came here. I want to find out more about who he was, and what role he might have played in the disappearance of my son."

"Oh, that's right isn't it? The missing boy's name is 'Lake.' I didn't put two and two together until just now. I don't watch TV, dear, just the papers. I'm so sorry. I've lost children of my own. Even at this age, it never gets easier…"

The bell chimed and the elevator doors opened to the outside. A rush of cool air came over her as they walked out. Below, the city rumbled with evening life and light. "No, it doesn't," she agreed.

There was a lounge at the top, fitted with outdoor tables, couches, and chairs. Mrs. Presgrit made a bee-line for the chaise, which had a coffee-table beside it that faced the rising sun. Barbara followed closely behind the hobbling figure, and set the tray down.

"Can I ask you a question?"

The older woman nodded with warmth.

"When we spoke at the rehab facility, you mentioned that you didn't believe what they said about Mr. Strickler in the papers. What did you mean by that?"

"Well, if you want my perspective, dear, I don't think he abducted that boy."

"What leads you to think that?"

"Instinct, mostly." She checked the pot to see if the tea had steeped. "He doesn't have a bad soul, though certainly an old one. But he was sick with something, too."

This was the first time she'd heard of it. "Sick?"

"The first time I went down there when he was having one of his episodes, it scared me half-to-death.. That skin of his, sometimes it would turn green, and his voice got all gravelly, like he had a cold. And his eyes would yellow. I think it was the liver, dear, but you would be better able to tell."

Blinking, her mind ran through the list of conditions that might be responsible. Nothing lined up.

"He wore a funny hat that made him look like he had these great big horns. Something medical." She laughed, and gestured with her hands. "Sometimes, I would sit up here with him at night when he was like that. Just in the quiet. He wouldn't let me come too near. It seemed to make him feel better."

"It sounds like you knew him well.

"I don't know about that," she shook her head, and bends over to pour two cups of tea from the pot. "He was never the type to let anyone get close."

The statement piqued Barbara's interest.

"But we were there for each when times got rough." She handed Barbara a saucer. "I told him once—I said: 'I'm not going to treat you like you're sick, as long as you don't try treat me like I'm old, and we've been uncanny pals ever since."

"And you remember me being with him?"

"Oh yes, dear. Without a doubt. I would hear you two from my balcony sometimes. Mostly prattle and laughter. I noticed it because it wasn't his usual way. It's always been so quiet down there. Maybe low music or a serious conversation-these hearing aids pick up a surprising amount of noise-but never anything that had him laughing like that."

Shoulders slumping, she looked the older woman in the eyes. "God, it's so strange." She said as she swallowed her tea, "I don't remember any of this, but you're not the only one who's suggested that I was carrying out some sort of relationship with him. Retrograde amnesia can occur with traumatic events, and even with small head bumps, but it's _rare_ , and I can't even begin to contemplate how I could have forgotten something so crucial to my son's safety."

Mrs. Presgrit blinked up at her, and Barbara couldn't tell if she was following the conversation or not. Possibly, the older woman was considering why she was sharing the rooftop company of a madwoman.

"I know it sounds crazy," Barbara continued. "But I'm just…lost. People are starting to think that I was somehow involved in my son's disappearance, and, honestly, I'm starting to believe them. "

The hand on her shoulder was soft, a beacon of understanding. "I very much doubt that dear. I think that you've been so worked up over these events that you haven't allowed yourself the time to relax, and to meditate. I might seem impossible, but I can't tell you how many times I've found the answer simply by taking a step back from the situation and allowing myself to calm down enough to think. You've got all these thoughts breaking in and calling for your attention: who, what, where, why, when? The truth is in there somewhere, but you have to help it get through the all sludge. "

She knew the older woman was right. Thoughts, like people, never performed well when forced, and she'd been beating hers down with an iron rod. How in the wide world she was going to get herself to relax remained another question entirely.

"Where would you go, anyways, if you wanted to relax?"

Mrs. Presgrit wide and wrinkled eyes looked out on the horizon. "There's a nice little scenic overview of the mountain pass back in my time, we used to call it 'sugar hill.' The young crowd likes to go there at night, but you really ought to see it before dawn—you just get up there and watch the city sparkle. No one's seen Arcadia until they've seen it waking up like that."

"I'll have to try it." She said with an eager voice. "I'm willing to try anything at this point."

They spoke about other things—her husband Charles, the weather, what it was like to have a kid grow up, how times had changes, and how some things would never change at all. She found Mrs. Presgrit's company to be warm and inviting, and whoever her son's teacher was as an individual, he hadn't been wrong about how pleasant it was to be in her presence.

By the time they made it back down to Mrs. Presgrit's apartment, it was well into the evening, and her stomach gurgled and churned in irritation.

"It sounds like you need to put something on that stomach, dear."

"I'm sorry," she said as she leaned against the kitchen countertop. "I'm not hungry, it's just reflux."

"I have some medicine, she said, hobbling over into a cabinet to pull out a pink bottle. "It'll do the trick."

Something sparked within her. A strong pull this time.

"Dear?" the voice echoed. She ignored it, chasing after the vein of thought. An image started to form. A man in a window with yellow eyes.

"Dear." An arm on her shoulder. She shook herself back into reality. "Wha-uh. No, no thank you. I'm fine."

"Are you sure, dear? You look quite pale."

Frustration overwhelmed her, her emotions whirling with the inability to remember whatever it was that seemed so crucial to her son's disappearance. In a flourish, she grabbed her keys.

"I should probably get going," she said with a shy huff. I'm taking care of my neighbor's id until she gets out of rehab and he'll probably be needing dinner."

It was a lie. Toby was spending the night at his friend Eli's.

Mrs. Prestgrit set the bottle down and went back into the kitchen. "Well, let me send you home with a little treat, hmm? Maybe the child will want some."

It was difficult to calm her growing sense of impatience. "Oh, that's very kind of you but-"  
"I insist dear," the older woman spoke over her, and, just like that, she didn't have a choice. Thus issued into a hovering sense of compliance, Barbara folded her arms and watched helplessly as Mrs. Presgrit filtered through her cabinets in search of the right ingredients. Flour, sugar, butter: oh my, this was going to take a while.

And much like a child, she was sent away to "play" while business was being done in the kitchen.

"You know, "Mrs. Presgrit said as she set a mixing bowl along the counter. "I _do_ have a key to his apartment. He told me never to tell anyone that I had it, but now that the dear boy is gone, I suppose it doesn't matter."

Her brow rose. If Mrs. Presgrit was aiming to distract her, then she was doing a fine job of it. "You do?"

"Why yes," she continued, "I sneak in there to water his plants, but they've made a mess of the place with this investigation. Here," the lady reached into her pocket to grab her keys. "It's the gold one with the funny-shaped top."

Wordless, Barbara took it, both eager and afraid.

"Maybe it will help you find an answer."

"I hope so," she said, clutching the keys to her chest.

***

Ten minutes later she found herself hovering in front of the bronzed "515" with heavy trepidation.

If Jim was gone, she wasn't sure she wanted to remember.

The cold, clinical side of her—the part of her that could set pain aside for the greater cause—asserted otherwise. She _had_ to know. If she had somehow played a part in this, then she deserved whatever punishment awaited her.

The key found its way into the lock. She twisted it with resolve, and pushed the door ajar. It creaked in protest. creaked as it opened.

Cedar, mulberries, black pepper, and spice: these were the first scents that greeted her as she stepped past the threshold of the hallway, and into the looming vacancy.

It was cold and dark, despite the feeble strands of daylight filtering through the blinds. Feeling strangely watched, she shut and locked the door behind her. She switched on the light.

Unlike Mrs. Presgrit's apartment above, the floors were wood, and they made her footsteps echo like a ghost's as she walked. She stopped, stood, waited; but aside from dust, nothing stirred—no memories, no thoughts, no emotions, only the empty rot-gut feeling that her child had been taken away forever.

The unlit kitchen and bedroom stared at her like the eyes of a gaping skill. She approached the former, stepping over knocked-over waste bins and books. Opening the fridge, she half expected to find a body. Only half-eaten can of sardines, a molding orange, a lump of butter, and a milk carton stared back. The carton had a child's face on the back, but not her son's. Given that, it was at least a month old.

In the freezer, there was only one bad of frozen peas. Closing the doors, she started in on the cabinets. Marmite—something stirred. She opened the jar to smell it. Salt and yeast; disgusting. Spices, dishware, a small collection of rather ornate teacups-it went this way for twenty minutes, and by the end of it the most productive thing she had discovered was an unopened bag of gumdrops, of the spiced variety, hidden in the back of the drawer where he kept the dishcloths.

Odd, but nothing insidious—she took it as compensation for the lack of answers.

 _On to the bedroom,_ she thought. Grimly, she approached.

At the far end there was a sliding door that led to a narrow balcony. The glass on its surface was cracked, as though someone had thrown a rock at it.

 _Baseball,_ her mind conjured, but she didn't know why.

Smoothing her hands across the sheets, she tried to encourage her mind. If she and this 'Strickler' were, indeed, as close as everyone seemed to suggest, she could only guess what might have happened here. It was the natural pattern of events, anyways.

Strange, she thought, to have forgotten such a bond—even stranger that she had allowed it to form in the first place. She'd been alone, and purposefully so, for more than a decade-never wanting more, never wishing for anything to intrude upon the sacred bond she shared with her child.

It was hard for her to even imagine taking a lover into her life. He'd seemed kind enough and attractive to be sure, but a relationship? How on earth had she managed it with her schedule?

Confounded, she shook her head, and continued to comb the space for memories. Closets, bookshelves, bathrooms: nothing yielded any clues-stirrings, yes, but nothing solid. The only signs of life were the plants that Mrs. Presgrit had dutifully kept alive. A smile lend itself to that thought, but then died as the hope she held ebbed away.

Blankly, she went back into the living room. A large window where he kept a record player, a chair full of books, and a pianoforte beckoned her eyes. She approached it and sat backwards on the piano bench, elbows to her knees as she rubbed at the headache behind her eyes.

 _Nothing, nothing, nothing,_ she thought, though everything reeked of a strange familiarity.

The ring of the doorbell chased her out of her stupor. "It's just me, Barbara dear." She heard from the opposite side of the door. "I've got everything packed up and ready to go. Have you had any luck in there?"

She unhinged the chain-lock and opened the door. "Nothing," her blue eyes looked as empty as her words. "Except that he secretly had a sweet-tooth." She held up the unopened stash of spiced gumdrops and sighed. "I don't know what I was expecting."

The old woman smiled, despite the ill tiding. "Don't give up just yet," she said, and Barbara felt the weight of a container fill her arms, which had been transferred from Mrs. Presgrit's steady, time-honed grasp into her own. "You have to give it time."

Barbara looked down to the blazing surface of with a pistachio-green Tupperware container that threatened to send her right back to the 70s. "What about your container?" She asked, wincing against its glow.

"You can keep it, dear, until we see each other again." Her wrinkled hand reached to squeeze Barbara's arm. "Now, I'm going in to water the plants. I hope you enjoy the treat I made. Nothing store- bought. I wanted to return the favor."

"What favor?" she tried to ask, but Mrs. Presgrit was already in the room and watering, apparently too far to hear her.

She smiled and left, plopping the container in the passenger's seat when she finally got in the car. Nauseated, she didn't bother to look inside. She'd try it later, she thought, when her stomach felt less menacing, and when the next task on her list was complete.

A hour later, she found herself on Avery street. The sign above her hovered in bright, LED-backed splendor; it sported the words "fish market," which were encapsulated in the outline of a dead fish.

"Charming," she said half-mockingly as she peered through the glass door. No one attended the desk inside, though the "open" sign was still flipped. She entered, the bells set along the inner handle clanging as the door closed behind her. Instantly, the scent of salt and brine overwhelmed her senses.

The tanks along the back wall were dingy and green with age. The doctor crossed her arms as she squinted into them to obseve the flashes of silver through the mire. Their cold, gaping stares made her shiver as much as the air-conditioning.

A noise caught her off guard, and she looked up to the beaded entryway behind the counter.

"Can I help you find your way?" An old man with a warm, nutty voice came from behind the amber-beaded curtains. His accent was foreign—arabic, perhaps. His eyes were green. "You are looking lost."

"Oh," she remarked, hand on her chest. "Yes, thank you. I am looking for someone. An—umm, a 'freund Otto'?"

The green eyes sparked with recognition. "Yes. A friend of a friend is also my friend. You are welcome here. Step this way, hmm? He has been expecting you."

She slipped behind the counter and followed him into the back, past another door, down a staircase, and into a long wooden hall. The light faded, almost cave-like as they wandered further inside, and even though she could barely see the old man in front of her seemed to have no trouble.

"Watch your step" he warned at one point, before she tripped over a bucket full of water, which she could only see through a wavering glint in the nothingness Further and further they went, and she could have sworn they were going downward and had progressed ten times the length of the shop by the time he finally stopped.

Another door—she realized that they had passed several along the way. The older man opened it to a swath of yellow light, and the cherry tinged scent of a flavored cigar. It mixed strangely with the smell of the salt and the sea.

"Your guest is here," the warm man announced, and then beckoned with a hand for her to come inside.

"Danke, Herr Malek." The German-tinged voice floated into her ears and she looked to see the stout, familiar figure with his back to them at a desk. The door closed behind her.

She stepped further inside, and sat in the chair opposing his.

"Willkommen, Doktor," he spun around, holding what looked like a blue-tinged mackerel in his grasp. "Holy Mackerel," he joked.

She didn't laugh, or even respond, focusing, instead, on the small, white bandage that lingered on his nose.

"Fish is a good way to hide things, ja?" He remarked Klein und smelly with a fat-pocket belly." He said in a sing-song voice as he waggled the fish by its tail

The light reflected rainbow from its iridescent scales. Behind him, the other table was covered in them.

Otto set the body on a table and sliced it open with a pocket knife, careful not to run through any organs. She didn't wince, or recoil, or even gag. If he was aiming for repulsion, he had a long way to go.-much worse had come through her ER.

If anything, she felt intrigued. He seemed to scowl at that.

He cut a large incision into the stomach, ignoring the mire that dumped out, reaching in to grab the wax-wrapped object inside. His large hand peeled at it like an orange, revealing a garnet-colored jewel the width of a half-dollar. Wiping it with a handkerchief, he held it up to the light.

"You have made the correct decision." Otto said as he jotted a note on the yellow notepad resting beside him on the table, ignoring the fish-guts that transferred from his hand onto the page. "Coming here is in your best interest."

Her voice ebbed out of her, dominant in tone, though lacking venom. "I think I'll be the judge of that, thank you."

The scowl grew in size, though there was still a condescending spark of amusement in his eyes. Annoyed, she folded her arms and sat back.

"Ah, well, you will see," he threw the fish into a large barrel at the corner of the room, and reached into a box beside the desk to grab another victim—this time, a larger red grouper. "You have come. That is an indication of your…lack of faith in die Männer in blau, ja? Your police."

"Yes," she answered blankly, letting him set the emotion. "You are correct."

"Then in us, you must rely, regardless of your feelings for this order." The fish peeled away beneath the knife.

"And what order is that, exactly? Who is heading it? And what did my son take that would make him run away?"

"Ah, ah," he tutted, "the answers will not come as fast as you would like, but I will give you some, and I will tell you of our plan, hmm?"

She nodded, blue eyes gleaming with both irascibility and interest.

"It is called the Janus order," he took that as permission to continue. "You will not have heard of it. It is not a drug cartel. Aber Schwarzmarkt? Ja. We are panderers and thieves. Power is the endgame, but wir do not work for the type of prize you would imagine. Jetzt, your son has been given something called an eye. It is very valuable, and it is worth thousands of lives. Until recently, it was thought lost, but really it was only veiled."

This time, the wax ball he pulled from the stomach was larger. He unfolded it, pulled out a large copper armband beset with emeralds.

"Okay," she encouraged, watching as he cleaned the slime from the artifact, then jotted on his notepad again. "So, this 'eye'…why does he have it"

"Herr Strickler gave it to him." Next fish. The distinctive blue of yet another mackerel. "Why? Ich weiß es nicht. For years, he has maintained a power that you wouldn't believe among the organization's ranks, and is as black-gutted as they come in our world. All of this, he relinquished when he gave that artifact to your son. We know it was him; he is the only one who could have managed to keep it concealed for so long, and has reason to be angry with mein Chef. Something dear was taken from Strickler long ago-something that made him _soar_ with delight-and now he is at risk of losing more. Er ist ein Dummkopf. Sein Herz ist alt und schwach. It has happened to our agents in the past, though never to someone of his stature. His betrayal. Es war eine Überraschung—a surprise. To all of us."

"What do you mean by his 'heart?"

"You, mein lieber Doktor." He pulled out a green stone, and held it up to the light. "Ah, there we are." He remarked, and set it in front of her. "Now, everything is arranged. We have narrowed his whereabouts to a specific region. Interrogations have been executed," he paused, emphasizing the word, "that have led us to this conclusion. He has friends in high places, but his enemies are in higher. We would like to take you to this location. There is an alibi for you—you are under the guise of being selected to run a medical mission trip to this area. You will travel by plane, then by boat, to one of our fishing ports, where our company runs a great deal of its business. I will accompany you the entire way, along with a few select members of the order."

Her hands made circles in the air. "Woah, woah, woah, wait—let's rewind a few moments here and go back to the part where this involves Jim."

"Doktor, there is little to explain," he began. "Your son sees a threat where there is none, and Herr Stickler has led him to the slaughter. We would like all of this cleaned up, and swept under the rug with as little blood spilled as possible."

"So, you're threatening to _kill_ my son, if this boss of yours doesn't get what he wants out of it."

"Nein, nein, nein," he held his hands in the air, "we simply want to prevent-"

The sound of her cell phone blared, halting all conversation. Her brows furrowed as she looked at the number.

"Virginia, " she muttered, recognizing area code.

Holding up a finger, she answered.

"Hello?"

" _What the hell, Barb?"_ his voice sounded as sour as the day he had left

"James, _please_." She wasted no time. "Just tell me that you have my son. Tell me that he's safe."

 _I woke up at 4am this morning to the police trying to tear down my door-I get handcuffed, thrown in a car, read my rights, and all to find out that_ you've _somehow managed to lose our son."_

She ignored the venom in his words, wanting only the hard facts. "He's not with you?"

" _No, he's not with me." James spat, through the receiver. "I haven't seen the kid in years. Little punk probably doesn't want anything to do with his deadbeat daddy. What in the world made you think that I had him?"_

"He's been having a lot of issues with not having a father in his life. His guidance counselor, until recently, was trying to help him work through it, but then he just disappeared."

" _Oh, ok, so you're still trying to peg the blame on_ me _here."_

"Don't take that tone with me, James."

" _What about your boyfriend? I've heard all about this British wonder boy of yours. Have you asked him? Guess you two got so caught up in your little love-nest that you forgot to look after our boy."_

"How dare you." She ran a hand through her hair. "Honestly, how dare you; I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

" _They think he took him, Barb. I'm not just pulling this out of thin air. But even if it's not kipper-breath, Jim was probably just trying to get away from you. God knows we can't all live in the 24-hour med show you call a life."_

"I won't let you buffalo me into whatever sort of emotional trip you're trying to take me on. There was a time when you had that power, but it's long gone."

" _Oh, I'm so intimidated." He mocked._

She paced the room, ignoring Otto's questioning stare. "It's not meant to intimidate you. I'm not trying to fight you! You're supposed to feel ashamed, maybe even concerned! You know what," she waved a hand in the air, "I'm honestly not surprised that you don't."

" _Sorry, babe, it's not my fault you always go for the bad boys. So tell me, is Haggis_ really _an aphrodisiac, or is it just his slimy British accent that gets you slick?"_

Her blue eyes snapped shut as she bit her tongue. _Disgusting._

"Eleven years and there's still just _one_ thing on your mind."

" _Seriously, I wanna know. Is he better than me, or-"_

"You don't deserve Jim." She hung up before he could finish the question.

"That did not sound enjoyable." Otto chimed in after a reign of silence. "Kein Spaß, doctor.

She shot him a piercing glance, and then dragged a hand across her face, shoulders slumping into the desk. She didn't care about the fish. "I was hoping that that conversation would be productive," she said honestly, "but instead it just got petty."

Strangely, Otto looked…sympathetic? "Wi-we can take care of this for you. If you think it is a hindrance." He offered. "In Virginia, there are agents. A little wake-up call in die Morgen-this might set things right, hmm?"

She honestly couldn't tell whether he was offering to have James knocked around or done away with entirely. Either way, it wasn't violence she was after. "Oh, no, I um-I can handle him. But thank you."

Having thrown away the last mackerel, he finished cleaning the green stone with his handkerchief, and placed it on the table in front of her. It looked unremarkable, oddly shaped, and polished to reveal a rather vomitus green color.

From a drawer, he pulled out a wire-net sphere on a chain. It looked strangely similar to a tea-infuser, except that the ball was sterling silver and woven into an intricate pattern. Opening the basket, he placed the stone inside, snapped it shut, and then handed it to her.

Her brows threatened to knit blankets, "I'm supposed to take that?"

"Richtig," he said and urged her to take it. "Listen, the less you know about some things, the better. Believe it or not, this will help us find Strickler. Gaspéite is very rare, and this is some of his own. I have given you all of the information I can, for now. You will see your son alive again-I can promise you this, _if_ you help us."

For a cold moment she didn't move at all. None of it made sense, but if her training had taught her anything, it was that sometimes the strangest stories were true.

Silently, her hand rose and her fingers curled around the chain.

"You are an unexpectedly powerful creature, Doktor. I have learned this in our brief time." He offered with a remarkably earnest smile. "Let not the man on the phone lead you to think otherwise. Herr Malek is on the other side of the door. He will guide you out"

Her blue eyes were on him, glowing with internal heat. The smallest of smiles found her before she stood and slid out of the door.

"Zauber," she heard him whisper are she let the old man lead her away, but she did not know what he meant by it.

Barbara didn't go home that night. Instead, she drove. The highway glittered in the brilliance of her high-beams in the dark. A few people passed her, flashing her when she forgot to turn them down. Lights from cars with people she would never meet inside-they would survive. They had homes to get to after a long day of travel or work; her home was somewhere far, far away.

Pulling off the highway, she drove a mile or so before turning off onto a road that went up a steep hill. At the top, she stopped and parked the car.

Blue eyes scanned the clock. 3AM. Darkness hovered coldly outside; the stars her only companions. She'd hung the green stone from her rear-view mirror and looked at it as it dangled in its cage. How on earth it was supposed to find her son, she couldn't know.

All of this was too much.

Looking to Arcadia, she watched it sparkle in the haze far below, the lights blending in with the stars above. All of it shimmered like flecks of gold within the mire. I was funny how things became so jumbled from a distance, all of it melding into one, indistinguishable blob of city and sky. She imagined her memories functioned in the same manner. Somehow, she had to get closer.

Unbuckling the seatbelt, she tried to take Mrs. Presgrit's advice relax, taking deep breaths. Her shoulders still felt tense after a few minutes, the German man's voice still ringing in her ears, along with her ex-husband's. She felt like she had pandered with the devil.

Sighing, she stretched and stared out a while longer, letting her thoughts wander over the day. Time passed, and when she looked at the clock again, it was nearly 4AM. Feeling somewhat at ease, her eyes wandered to the shockingly green container that was stuffed into the passenger's seat, along with her bag. Picking it up, she opened the top and inhaled. Instantly, the scent of sweet berries and cake filled her nostrils. Her stomach rumbled in response, protesting the fact that she hadn't eaten all day.

Digging into her purse, she found a plastic wrapped-spoon (always on the go, she was) and tore it away from its bindings. The dessert was a few hours old, but still, she reasoned, within range of not poisoning her for lack of refrigeration. She peeled the green cover away and dug the spoon into the cake.

Three rather large bites in, and she was annoyed at how ravenous she had become, barely swallowing before she stuffed the next spoonful into her mouth. The strawberries were overwhelmingly fresh and bursting with flavor, and for a small moment she felt almost happy. Childish.

Then, there were tears. They began to stream down her face as she chewed, running like rivers into the well of her neckline. It wasn't the burst of memory she expected: no tidal wave of overwhelming thought, no overwhelming avalanche of recolkectiins. Rather, the flow was mild, the memories glowing at her from within the mire of her mind, twinkling like stars: as though they'd been running in the background all along.

All of it flowed into her, and through her, and out of her in the span of a gentle second—at once tumultuous and silent.

"Oh my god!" She cried, sobbing into her shaking hands. "Oh my god." The container fell to the passenger floor: strawberries and whipped-crème spilling everywhere.

She heard nothing but the tremendous gaps of silence between her own gasping sobs.

Thus, alone and time-wracked, Barbara remembered.

Nothing and no one came to the sound of her tears.


	6. Labyrinth of Lies

I must convey my endless gratitude to the awesome AZ-95, who let me borrow the wonderful CINDY LANE (the "impish badass" who many of you will undoubtedly recognize!) AND who graciously read over my shriveled dribbles to make sure I got the character right. That's right, folks! Cindy Lane is NOT mine! She is the brilliant creation of AZ-95, and her character can be viewed at: a href=" %20" rel="nofollow" /a

"Uhhh, Claire?" Toby said, tapping on the girl's shoulder as she reached up to sketch an arc beneath the bridge's overhang.

She ignored him, rising on the tips of her toes to reach the top of her semicircle.

"Claire," he shook her arm this time, prompting the girl to round on him as she held the horngazel in the air like a dagger. "I'm trying to concentrate, Toby. If you think this is so easy, then maybe you should pitch in and help. Jim was the only one who was ever tall enough to—what are you staring at?"

Barbara watched as the girl followed his gaze, brown eyes rising slowly to her blue. Her arms were folded, eyes narrowed as she stared at the two of them.

"Wow," Claire remarked. "Doctor Lake, I guess you came just in time to see us—"

"-preview our graffiti skills!" Toby interrupted, thinking himself brilliant.

"Uh," Claire eyed him strangely, "Yeah, for our project on…social expression and the right to vandalize. Don't worry, it's all removable.

"Take me to Vendel." Barbara said, and watched their expressions go blank.

For a cold moment, the three of them stared at each other, caught in a state of mutual shock as the highway rumbled above. Barbara could feel her heart beating in her chest as she tried to quell her impatience.

Toby was the first to respond, stepping toward her. "Vendel," he put a finger to his chin. "Hmm, where have I heard that? It that the name of the mailman, or-"

"Vendel," she spoke, "the leader of Trollmarket; the one who broke the spell-or whatever it was-between me and Walter. Big, dough-colored, white-horned, stone creature. That Vendel."

Toby's jaw all but melted to the ground. "Oh, _that_ Vendel. Gee, you really have to be specific, Dr. L."

"Toby," she warned.

"Wow," was all Claire could offer as she shook her head.

"Listen, I don't know if this is really a good time to see the big cheese. He's probably polishing his horns, or counting his gemstones, or doing some really import-"

"I can't believe it," Claire interrupted her friend. "You actually remember. Blinky said it was almost impossible, given the potency of Gumm Gumm-magic, but here you are and…oh my god, we _lied_ to you." She placed her hands on her face. "Listen, I just want you to understand that-."

"I know why, Clarie." She intercepted before the tirade of self-criticism could begin. "I've had an entire night to think about this. I'm not angry with you, or Toby. I know you were probably just trying to protect Jim's wishes. It's alright," her palms rose to the air to disarm the tension. "I just want to know where my son is. He hasn't come home, and the two of you have been acting…very strange. You're both clearly under a lot of stress. Something happened to him, didn't it?"

Claire's watering eyes provided all of the answers she needed. Toby, too looked ashamed.

"He…disappeared a few months ago," the boy added solemnly.

"It's okay," she tried to comfort them, reaching out to squeeze Claire's shoulder as the girl rubbed the meat of her palm against her eyes. "It's okay," she offered again. This time, the sniffing seemed to quell.

"I can help you draw this," she pointed to the arc. "Just take me too him. I think I know a way to find Jim. I can feel it."

The teenagers swapped looks before turning back to her.

"Right…" Toby took a deep breath, "so, Blinky's waiting on the other side. We were supposed to be here almost an hour ago. He's probably going to be pretty mad."

"The guidance counselor," she said, eyes squinting in remembrance. "Doesn't he have six arms?"

"Eyes," Toby said, "he has six eyes, and they're all going to be glaring at me once we get in there. Oh, man, he won't be expecting this."

"Don't worry, I'll handle him." Her gaze fell to Claire. "Can I try?" she pointed to the horngazel.

"Of course."

"I never actually saw this thing," said as she took the piece from Claire, and held its shimmering surface to the light. "Jim attempted to explain why you were struggling with this when Walt was trying to get to the bridge. He said you had to draw a semi-circle on the wall to make a portal. It didn't make any sense at the time. Still doesn't, really, but now I kind-of get it." She took a few steps, reached up, and finished the arc where Claire couldn't reach.

"Now what?" she stared at the wall.

"Push in the center," the girl grabbed the hilt of the artifact, and guided Barbara's hand toward the middle.

Crackles of light formed along the wall, splitting the surface of the underhung until the concrete fell away. Barbara felt a cold rush of air from the dense, black, portal that stood where the wall had been.

"Wow," she said in wonder.

"Tobias Domzalski," A voice rang from the darkness as they stepped inside, "although my time as a human was brief, you can rest assured that it would never have taken me this long to procure a simple roll of duct-tape—oh, hello Barbara—and I didn't even have a dime to my name! Part of me was worried that you two had gotten yourselves eaten by goblins or—oh my..." He looked back to the Doctor, all six eyes blinking in amazement.

Again, she folded her arms.

"Ms. Lake, I—"

"Actually, she's a doctor," Claire corrected.

"Yes, he nodded in apology, "Doctor Lake. It is, uh—quite a surprise to see you. Even more of a surprise that you don't look surprised." He held up a clever hand, then frowned and tucked it behind the other three. "How, may I ask, did you find your way to this realm? Your memory…"

"I got it back," she explained. "All of it-though there's still a lot that I don't understand; I need to see Vendel."

The troll paused. "Well my dear lady, that is a bit harder to arrange than-"

"Hmm, a glowing staircase—probably why I got so many bruises considering how we came through last time. I take it that this the way to Trollmarket?" She pointed down the pathway, eager not to waste time.

"Uhh…" the troll stuttered.

But Claire had already nodded.

"Right then," Barbara said, before her long legs strode to rally down the steps.

"Gah!" She she heard Blinky's voice above the steady pattern of her footsteps, "Well, my young companions, we can certainly see where our Trollhunter gets his stubborn sense of determination. Now stop her!"

The resulting thunder of their collective gates was not enough to impede her progress. Of all of them, she had the leanest gate, and she was used to walking fast along the hospital's halls.

At the bottommost step, she felt a hand grab her wrist from behind, and reeled around to see Claire staring up at her, half-shocked.

"Secure her legs with your duct tape!" Blinky's boomed from a distance above.

"What? We're not gonna tie up Jim's mom!" Toby's voice followed.

The girl and the woman continued their locked gaze..

"We did this to you," Claire shook her head, lingering a few moments, and let the doctor go.

Barbara nodded, smiled, and then kept going.

"Oh, Vendel will not like this!" Blinky huffed to the kids when he finally made it to the bottom.

The doctor pressed forward, deeper and deeper, until the very air seemed to choke her. Dense walls of housing lined each side of her, almost to the ceiling of the cave, and she felt that she had entered the very bowels of this strange and glowing world. Losing herself in the crowd, she tried to ignore the strange looks and startled exclamations that the rumbling creatures gave her as she passed. Strangely, some of them seemed to recognize her, while others rolled their eyes, and others, still, recoiled away in anger or fear

"It's an infestation of man," she watched a hulking figure mutter as it stared at her from the depths of its shopfront.

The doctor had no time to be intimidated, or even surprised by their presence.

Most of Trollmarket, she could only remember in murky patches—snippets from when she'd floated in and out of consciousness during her painful plight—and for a few moments, she felt lost within the labyrinth. Spinning around, she tried to gaet her bearings, but nothing came forward from the shadows of her mind.

"Excuse me," she tried to catch the attention of a passing behemoth, who shrugged her off with a grunt.

"Excuse me," she tried again. This time, another figure (female in persuasion) hissed at her and shrank away in the half-light. Her shoulders sank in dismay.

"Anyone," she whispered blue eyes falling to the ground.

But Jim was still out there, she thought, and felt her motivation rise anew.

The 'street' (if it could be called one) finally opened, and she blinked at the multi-faceted landscape as it twinkled at her with its candied light. Scanning the bowl-like surface of the scene, her eyes fell on something that had the line of her lips tugging upward in a smile.

The giant, fiery gemstone in the middle? That, she recalled.

 _Heartstone,_ her mind supplied as she floated toward its light, wondering how she had missed it the first time.

A few hefty minutes saw her lifting a hand to the warmth the stone exuded, pulsing with light and life, like a tiny slice of the sun.

In the center of its glowing mass, she spied a path that led to a door. Two massive guards patrolled the entrance, but they were so tall and hefty that she slipped past them as easily as a mouse.

The walls inside reflected the same red-orange glow as the outside, almost transparent through their shining, shimmering surfaces. Walking past them felt disorienting-like passing through a mirror maze at the fair—and her stomach reeled after a short time. Coming into larger cavern she paused to catch a few bursts of breath, placing a hand along the wall.

"Ahchachachachachachacha!" She felt something crawling up the back her arm, only to be whipped away a moment later by a large, red stick that jutted over her shoulder.

The doctor spun around.

"Filthy little things," the white troll rumbled with an observant scowl. "But your son has taught me to tolerate them, as he has everything else."

"Vendel," she spun around in surprise, looking him up and down.

"Why yes, that is my name, Bar-bu-rah." his large, tattoo-engraved arms folded as he balanced his weight against his staff.

Her gaze lingered on his moonstone eyes. "You remember me."

The great troll chuckled, despite himself. "Well, it's not every century that a human and a changeling walk into my dwelling asking to be separated from a Gumm-Gumm binding spell-especially, with the ruckus the three of you created driving a man-created vehicle right into the middle of our market's square. 'How could I not remember you?' is more the question."

She offered a conceding nod.

"The real mystery is how _you_ remember _me_." He continued, quirking his horned head in wonder. "I can see in your eyes that all has returned to you. I don't understand how you overcame the spell so quickly."

Quickly? She thought. Two months wasn't her idea of 'quick.'

"I'm not sure," she shook her head. "You mentioned that the spell would make me forget, but there wasn't any time-stamp." Her lithe shoulders twitched out a shrug. "I guess the effects finally wore off."

"No," Vendel asserted. "Even a troll wouldn't have come by that sort of breakthrough in less than a decade. The risk of you regaining your memory was great, but certainly not this soon."

He paused and looked at her, scratching his long beard, which swayed and glistened like corn silk in the stone-fed light. "Hmm," his slatted gaze narrowed, and she felt very much like a beetle under a magnifying glass. "If I didn't know any better, I would say that you had a touch of magic in you."

"I seriously doubt that," a nervous huff found the air.

Silence lingered between them, as though he expected her to admit to harboring some strange secret, bit no such revelation came. She looked down at her hands, the skin of them dry and brittle with her lack of self-care, and focused on wringing them together.

It wasn't magic, she thought, that brought her mind back together, but it certainly seemed close.

"When I was down and in pain from that spell," she began, trying to outline her perspective, "I heard Blinky mention something to Jim: he said that troll knowledge of the human bond was limited." The corner of her lip tugged up "It sounded funny to me, because even humans have a finite understanding of it. In my profession, you learn that pretty quickly. I've seen people endure injuries and illnesses that, by all patterns of logic, were not survivable—purely because they wanted to see their loved ones through in this world. You hear these stories of women lifting cars to save their babies…" She trailed off. "Maybe it seems like magic to you but, really, I'm just a mother. I'd do anything to keep Jim safe."

Vendel stood for a weighted moment, then folded his large hands behind his back. "Well, you _are_ human, and it _was_ Gumm-Gumm magic," he concurred, "I suppose there is some room for an anomaly; but what do you plan to do with your knowledge?" The leader frowned. "The Trollhunter is inaccessible, even to us. "

"That's what I've come down here to ask _you._ " She bit her lip, blue eyes blinking up at him. "I need to know what happened to my son. Everyone else has been lying to me in some way; I came to you to get the truth. From what I gather, you're the closest thing this world has to a medical professional, and your abilities and knowledge are second-to-none. Even Walt suggested that you were the only thing that could help us when I—when _we_ ," she corrected herself, "were injured."

Vendel nodded, leaning against his staff.

"Where I come from, you and I play similar roles-at least in that regard-and when I have to tell members of someone's family about a difficult prognosis, I don't disguise the truth. You didn't hide the truth about my memory loss, or the pain we would experience while you were breaking the enchantment-I know I can trust you." She moved to a slab of rock and placed her weight against it. "So please, tell me. Where's Jim?"

Again, the white troll took his time, considering every nuance of what the human was asking of him.

"Hmm," he intoned, milky eyes narrowing.

She didn't look away.

"Come into my dwelling," the great troll gestured toward a long, dark corridor. "You will need to sit properly to hear it."

Vendel told her. Everything.

By the time he closed on the scene of Blinky and the children rushing to him with the news of Jim's daring journey into the Darklands alone, Barbara had filled an entire troll-sized handkerchief with her tears.

She sniffed quietly to herself, and lifted the mug he'd given her to her lips. In her small hands, the "mug" was more of a canister, but she made due all the same. Whatever brew rested inside tasted lightly of anise seed with a touch of slippery elm. It warmed her from the inside, and helnped stave off her sorrow.

"My god…" she whispered, when he paused to give her a moment.

Vendel took a sip of his own mug, and stared into the rock-glass fire of his hearth. "We don't have much time. The news of the Trollhunter's disappearance has already spread. There are those out there who will see the move as foolish, and too much of a risk. If Gunmar captures him—and the chances of that are high—then he will force Jim to open the bridge, and will unleash his dark fury upon this realm. Because of that threat, my contemporaries within the council will want to see the bridge destroyed, thus sealing your son's fate."

"And there's no other way out? No other path to get to him?" She asked weakly.

"No," his long beard swayed as he shook his head, "we've been unabe to contact him with the Fetch, and the power to create another opening has been long lost to time. I would agree with the council, if I didn't already know the fortitude your son wields. It is amazing that he has survived thus far—that alone is a testament to his strength—but on top of that, he has the Eye of Gunmar, a crucial relic that he acquired from that changeling, Stricklander. It is the last of the Triumbric stones, the final piece he needed in order to obtain the power to defeat that vile brute."

"So Walt—Stricklander, whatever his name is-he handed my son the one thing preventing him from going to the Darklands? He must have had some motive. Clearly he was on the bad side of this; maybe he knew it would help break Gunmar out."

The troll chuckled, seemingly amused. "There was a time I would have believed that." He smiled at her, wrinkles deepening at the edges of his moonstone eyes, "but I no longer subscribe to that perspective. You son has made us see things in different ways. Even changelings." That changeling, despite his conniving nature, had one weakness—and that was his heart, which was dead-set on keeping you out of this mess. This may be hard for you to hear, but your memory wasn't erased because of the unbinding spell. I agreed to erase it after he bribed me with Gunmar's eye."

"You _what?_ " Her eyes shot up.

"You must understand that things were desperate; I knew your son was going into the Darklands with or without the Triumbric stones. _He_ needed to save Claire's brother, and _I_ needed him to not release Gunmar, so I did what was necessary in order to ensure that he had a chance of success. Part of me believes that changeling would have given the stone to him anyways—he had other reasons for doing it-but I couldn't be sure."

"What reasons? And how did Claire's brother end up in some alternate dimension? I never heard that he went missing."

"It is my belief that he had lost his loyalty to Gunmar. Changelings are peculiar creatures. They were originally troll young, but were stolen from us, and were unnaturally altered to be different from our kind. There was a war, back then, between our races, and the Gumm-Gumms raised them to be the most ruthless, cunning soldiers the human world had ever seen. Hard to tell that something is your enemy when it walks and talks like one of your kin. Ever since, for centuries, the Gumm-Gumms have been kidnapping human babies and replacing them with these spies. Once bonded to a human child, a changeling can use its human skin at will. That is what happened to young Claire's brother. He was replaced with a Gumm-Gumm spy, and his parents were never the wiser for it."

"That's…horrible" she placed a hand on her mouth.

"Luckily, the Trollhunter managed to discover the exchange, and exposed the truth that changelings—who were long thought extinct from our realm—still lived in our midst."

"And Walt is one of these shapeshifters who steals human children and deceives their parents?"

"Well…yes, in a way" the troll made a face, "but he didn't take the child himself-that is all arranged with goblins-and I'd wager he was very young when it happened, perhaps only a century or so old; that is hardly passing childhood, for a troll. For comparison, it would have been like sending a decade-old human into service as a spy. They are barely capable of discernment at that age, and he was raised, as the others, to think that humans and their barbarism needed to be erased from existence. But here is where the story gets interesting. Gunmar corrupts and drains the mind of almost everything under his command, but he couldn't have done this with the changelings, because it would have taken away their ability to protect him on the surface. They retained their free will, so he brainwashed them, and kept them under his control with fear. He would spend a few centuries beating them into submission, letting them compete for his favor, hardening their hearts to be as cold and stone-laden as their bodies, and then would dispatch them into the human world with the belief that his dominance could never be surmounted."

She watched him rise and pace the room, fascinated by the alien patterns of his movement.

"But there was one thing Gunmar could never have predicted, and that was the subtle, simple, generic, and honestly quite stupid power of human love. Love is not something a child would have experienced in the Darklands—younglings there are put through an endless cycle of approval and disapproval, and there is merciless competition with ones comrades. Now, imagine a creature like Sticklander, who has known nothing but violence and deceit from his friends and caretakers, coming into the human realm to play the role of a human baby. He nurses, plays, shares his mother's warmth-all things that predicate the establishment of love within the human bond." The troll gestured to the air with his staff as he spoke. Barbara's eyes fell to the floor, as if remembering such moments with her own child. "Hot-headed to prove his worth, and having been trained against falling for such attachments, he thinks himself immune. But, eventually, his conditioning breaks down. The numbness drilled into his soul chips away, and, one day, he begins to feel. Your race can indeed be barbaric and prone to violence, but there is something to be said of your love…how intense it is despite its brevity. Even the darkest amongst troll-kind cannot look away from that light. "

The leader sat down and placed a hand on each knee, clearly fond of his role in the telling of this tale.

"So what does he do? Gunmar won't accept this, so he hides it. Decades pass, centuries, Gunmar becomes trapped, and more and more of his heart chips away. With the feelings comes sympathy, anger, sadness, joy, and, in time, love-and there is, perhaps, a bit of resentment for the dark king. For what does Gunmar have to offer? Progress? Certainly not, he wants to plunge the world back into Chaos. The eradication of human-kind? At this point, the changelings have spent more time living as humans than as trolls—they'll see it as an extermination of themselves. There is only one thing. Survival. The changeling sees Gunmar's return as inevitable, everyone does—even the denizens of Trollmarket, in their secret hearts—and so, grudgingly, he keeps himself on the perceived side of victory, and remains loyal. But then he sees something, something he has never seen before—an opportunity for Gunmar's undoing. This opportunity comes in the form of your son, the first human Trollhunter. The child it seems, is a prodigy, and after many unexpected victories, defeats Bular, Gunmar's only offspring, which no Trollhunter has ever done. And so, you see, giving your son the eye meant that he and his half-breed brethren had a chance at freedom. He had faith in your son, and, strangely, the Trollhunter seemed to share that faith in return. But, of course, I only met him briefly. I could be wrong." The troll folded his arms neatly, and blinked at hear.

"Yeah," she said, placing her head in her hand. "You could be."

"I don't know what role Angor Rot played in all of this, and there is the glaring fact that he has, many times, tried to eradicate our young hero. For that information, you would have to ask the changeling himself, and that is your intention, is it not?"

Her head pulled back, and she blinked up at him in surprise. "H-how did you know?"

The great horns shook. "It seems I have a knack for predicting when a member of the Lake clan is going to launch into an impulsive and unquestionably dangerous venture to save another's life." He said with a twinge of mirth. "Your son must have gotten it from somewhere, and I've gathered that you were his only caretaker, so the logic follows. Of course, there is also this." He pointed with one claw to the wired cage she wore around her neck. "Gaspéite is not a common gemstone. I treated the changeling; I know that he was made of it. How did you come by such a piece?"

She shook her head, hesitant to give away the information she'd acquired from Otto. Trollmarket, although rich in resources and information, had little to offer in the way of hope. Although what Otto offered was dangerous, and very obviously a trap, given what she now remembered, it was the closest thing she had to finding Jim.

"You certainly weren't wearing it the last time," Vendel continued, "and whoever offered it to you knew exactly what to do with it. That wire cage prevents gruesomes from detecting it, and since you don't know what those are: they are the horrible creatures that feed off of troll remains. Was it the changeling? To offer someone a piece of your own living stone, is not in common practice, not even amongst mated pairs."

Her eyebrows rose to the height of the stalactites as she cleared her throat.

"Despite what the others may lead you to believe, human," he said with a smug expression. "I wasn't born yesterday. It isn't so surprising, given what he is. Changelings, beyond the link they share with their familiars, are part human, after all. You humans are only just beginning to discover how to manipulate the cells within your bodies—'eugenics,' I believe it is called in the language of your race. That is an ancient and dark art amongst troll-kind, and most of us turned away the practice of it a long ago. We call them 'impure' because of their unnatural and muddled genetic make-up, and we scoff of them not because of what they are, but because of what they represent. They embody the hatred of our race, against both humankind and our own fragile species, and born in them is the ability to instigate destruction within both. How funny it is, then," he said, bending low to catch her eyes, "to see that an agent of such chaos, the bane of humankind, has fallen in love the very thing it was meant to corrupt. Most of my kind would balk at what has occurred between the two of you, but for my part I see a certain sense of poetic justice-a blossom of adversity against the intent of the Gumm-Gumms, as natural as it was accidental."

"I wouldn't exactly call what happened 'love,'" she said, somewhat flustered, although her curiosity was getting the better of her. "I mean, he used me to hurt Jim; that was pretty much the foundation of most of our interactions. I can see that now."

"I don't defend his behavior, Barbara, I'm merely pointing out the intercultural significance of what has occurred. On a personal level, I can understand your perspective and its accompanying distress. But be assured, whatever advantage he tried to take with you, he lost. That changeling may have been able to hide a lot from me, but he couldn't hide that," the great troll chuckled, despite himself. "Believe me, I could smell it. Which brings me back to the question: where did you get that trinket?"

"I-uh, found it?"

He lifted a brow, but before he could speak, a black void appeared near the entrance of the room. Both of them paused to look at it.

"What the…?" Barbara lifted a hand to her mouth.

"Oh, goody," Vendel rolled his eyes, and stood as he grabbed his staff.

"Great Gronka-Morka!" Blinky burst into the room, children in tow, three hands flying in the air while the other held Gnome-Chompsky, whose tiny arm pointed squarely in the direction of the Doctor. "How was I supposed to know that she made it all the way into your dwelling?"

He put two hands to his knees, short of breath, while Chompksky crawled up to his head to grasp one of his horns. The Gnome twittered, while Toby and Claire stepped to the forefront.

"We had to get Chompsky to scout you guys out through the gnome tunnels." Claire spoke.

"Dang, Dr. L, if I'd've known you were _that_ fast I would have taken Blinky's advice about the duct tape. Talk about power-walking."

She arched her brow.

"I mean, I would never disrespect you like that, Dr. L! It's just-who knew doctor's kept in such shape!"

Claire rolled her eyes. "It's a hospital, Toby. She literally has to run from room to room sometimes. Just ignore him," the girl's eyes focused on Barbara, clutching her shadow staff. "I tried to stall them for as long as I could," she smiled.

Toby gasped. " _You_ were working with her? Betrayer!"

"Will everyone please quiet down!" Vendel's voice boomed over the ruckus. "Honestly, Blinkous, why not just bring the human to me at once? Your attempts at hiding them in the past have never been successful."

"I feared that I may once again incur your wrath," he explained, with some vehemence, "which _you_ have never failed to dole out once a human has been discovered."

"Be that as it may," Vendel grumbled, "this isn't just any human. She is the Trollhunter's mother, and has regained her memory in an alarming amount of time; I ought to be informed of such things when they occur."

Blinky folded his four arms with a pout.

"Look," Barbara spoke before things could become more heated, "No one is to blame for my presence. I brought myself. Now, my son is running out of time. I _need_ to know how I can get to him. The answer clearly isn't in Trollmarket. Maybe Walt really is the best chance we have here."

"Uh, do you mean 'Mr. Strickler,' Walt, or are we talking about someone else, here?" Toby cocked a brow.

"Yes, Toby," she nodded, "your teacher."

Blinky's six eyes widened. "The changeling!? That traitorous, conniving, back-stabbing son of lies! Creature of absolute chaos! He is only interested in saving his own skin, and would rend yours apart in a single beat of his bloody heart. Good gravy, woman, are you insane?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm desperate. _All_ of us are. Maybe, I'm still new at this troll-world thing, but I'm not going to sit around and figure everything out while Jim's life is on the line!" She narrowed her gaze on Blinky, whose own face softened in the firelight. "That 'creature of chaos' the closest thing you guys had to having an atlas of the Darklands and its inhabitants. He was close to Gunmar, and you just let him go! I'm going to track him down, whether or not I have aid, and so help me I am going to get an answer out of him. From what I've heard, I've spent more time with him than any of you. I can get beneath his skin."

Blinky sighed, shoulders sagging. "Well, Barbara, you are right about one thing. We _are_ desperate. Jim is as important to us as he is to you, but he would not like seeing your involvement in this. By Deya, if he were here..."

"It was never Jim's job to protect me." She shook her head, trying to ignore the stinging her eyes. "My job, as his mother, is to keep _him_ safe. That doesn't always mean giving him what he wants, or what he'd like."

"She's right," Claire piped in. "Jim keeps trying to shield all of us from danger by pushing us away, by keeping us out of it. We have to prove him wrong. He needs help, and it's not like we have anything to lose by trying to find this guy."

Barbara put a finger to the air. There were already one-too-many children missing from Arcadia. "I just need information on where Walter might have gone. I don't expect anyone to go with me."

"What?" Toby exclaimed, "you can't go there alone! This is just like Jim!"

Vendel's voice rose before anyone else could argue. "The three of you," he gestured to Blinky and the two teens with his staff, "can start by trying to dig up any information about the changeling and their potential safe houses. You will no doubt have many hours of work ahead of you, so I suggest you begin immediately."

When the trio hesitated, Vendel stamped his staff. "Thank means leave us, Blinkous."

"Right, children, scurry along," Blinky used his arms to push gently at the children's shoulders, who obeyed, albeit with measured reluctance. Toby tried to argue, but Claire, for her part, stayed silent. Barbara watched as the girl's curious brown eyes disappeared behind the thick cloth of the entryway.

With their company thus ushered away, Barbara's attention fell back to Vendel.

"Fear not, I will make no attempt to thwart you—you're just going to flutter off and do it anyways. Heaven forbid any of us listen to an old, blind fool." He waved her off with his hand.

"You said yourself that you didn't know a way into the Darklands," she countered, "and that the bridge was impossible to open without Jim."

"That is correct."

"If you're one of the most powerful beings on this side of the Prime Meridian, and you can't get in, then maybe what we need isn't magic, or at least not _your_ magic. In the human world, magic is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. If the kids got this "Fetch" thing from his office, then clearly he had a way of contacting other creatures within the Darklands. We may be able to bribe one of them into helping us find him. If we do that, then Jim can reach through the fetch, and could trick the bridge into opening for us."

"Hmm," he scratched at his beard, "I will help you where I can, but what makes you think that you're at all prepared to take on such a task? Or that you'll even be able to find the changeling, knowing as little as you do?"

"Well," she looked down to the wire basket around her neck. Still unsure of whether or not to break the news. _No, not yet, they would never let you go with Otto. He must be another changeling._ "That's what I came here for," she continued. "If you can just give me a few days of your time, maybe teach me a little, I can get some leverage in this situation."

"Two weeks," he held the corresponding number of clawed fingers in the air, "and no less. I know you want to go rushing in, but that _is_ a rush in my book. We must train you as best we can to face the coming storm. There are resources at my disposal that I believe you may find useful in your quest-one in particular will be all too happy to meet you when next we speak, though you may wish to bring something warm to wear."

"Fine," she folded her arms, not qite understanding the meaning behind his later words. "Come what may, but Toby and Claire can't be a part of this. I'm not going to let them go missing like my son."

"Luckily for you, that is in both of our interests." Vendel gave a toothy smirk, "I need the Trollhunter's companions to stay here, where they can continue to control the chaos that in burgeoning in the world above. If this plan of yours doesn't work, then we won't have wasted any time. I will find a way to thwart them. In the meantime, you must keep your presence here a secret." He asserted. "I cannot have all of Trollmarket rioting over the presence of another human. There are passages and entryways within Trollmarket that are reserved for my use alone. I will grant you access to them, and I alone will oversee the commencement of your training."

He reached into his satchel, and produced an item that looked very similar to the jut of crystal that the kids had used to create a portal into the troll world, except that it was thinner, and held a cerulean glow.

"A crystal…pencil?"

"What Claire and Tobias carry is called a 'horngazel,' he explained. "This one will open doors that they cannot. I will show you how to use it, and where the entrance I use corresponds within the human realm. You are to use only this. Do you understand?"

She didn't understand, but she nodded, and took it from his hands.

"Good," Vendel said, and made his way to the entrance. "Follow me, then, my young pupil, I shall show you your way home."

Vendel took her to an exit that, strangely, came out near one of the hospital's imaging labs. She was surprised to see that it was already dark outside. Twenty minutes and an Uber driver later, she was finally in her car and driving home. The ride was quiet; the hum of air conditioning splashing against her mind as her thoughts tumbled like sea-waves. So much had happened Part of her felt numb with the overload. The majority of her focus was centered on finding and protecting her son. Her desire to see her son again trumped all others

Sighing, she turned onto her street. Lucky for her, there was a police car parked beside her driveway.

"Fantastic," she muttered, pulling in and cutting the car off in front of the garage.

She heard the door of the cruiser close as she walked up the steps of the porch.

"Hey, doll." The voice behind her reeked with overconfidence. "I was driving by the neighborhood and thought I'd check in on you. Gotta keep tabs, y'know? How's the head?"

Forcing a smile, she turned once she had the door unlocked, two hands grasping the handle behind her. "It's fine. Getting better by the day. Is Detective Brennan not with you?"

Halfway through her lawn, he paused before her porch. "He took an early night—some special dinner thing with the fam. "Speaking of, have you had dinner yet?"

"Uh, yep." She put a hand on her stomach. "Full up. Grabbed a sandwich on the way home."

He hopped up the porch-steps and leaned against one of the columns, eyes growing hazy. "What about dessert?"

"No, thanks. I already have ice cream in the freezer."

"I love a good scoop of ice cream." He said, looking at his watch, "I've got about ten minutes until my shift ends—what'd'you say we share a cone…lick the cream…meet in the center?"

She tried to fiddle with the handle behind her, but the lock had jammed. Damn. "Don't you think that's a little inappropriate?"

"Not when it comes to this, doll-face." He put a hand over his heart. "I'm all about the law, you know?" He continued, "and the laws of attraction are telling me that there's something going on between us. It's hard to hide while Brennan's in the room, but I can tell that there's this spark between us." He stood straight and stepped closer, "a current that's turned up too high-shocking us until we're both in agony.

"What the…?" She stepped back, until her spine was flush with the door.

"It makes my whole heart flutter. Like there's a butterfly caught in my chest, drawn to the ruby-red shine of your presence."

 _Oh dear God._ Since the moment the investigation had begun, the detective had been a raging flirt, but this went far beyond anything she'd seen out of him. Whatever this was, it was evident that this had been stagnating within him for a while. Where he saw a waterfall, she saw a busted sewage pipe, and now the deluge was spilling out of him in all its bacteria-infested glory.

"Those are called palpitations," she muttered, though he didn't hear her.

"And there's this pain, like I'm just gonna burst if I don't try to turn down the voltage."

"Electrocardiologist. Not my field."

"It's just…I feel crazy, you know? And that hair of yours, it just lights my guts on fire."

"I'll order you a psych-eval,." The sarcasm seemed lost on him.

"I need you to end my misery, doc." He said dramatically, putting an arm over the doorframe as he closed in on her. "And I can help you end yours .You're passionate, Barbara, I can tell, and whatever you did for that Strickler guy, I can help you hide it."

Her brows furrowed, and she tried not to cough against the overwhelming cloud of cologne that ebbed off of him. "I'm not hiding anything," she growled, anger rising-though, this time, it was actually a lie.

"Sure you're not, doll-face." He held up a palm. "Listen, I'm _way_ into bad girls, so don't worry about that. All you red cherries are the same."

A flush crept up her neck, spurned by her irritation, though he mistook it for coyness. Her mouth stood agape in incredulity, utterly at a loss for what to say.

Smiling, he cleared his throat, adjusted his trousers, and waggled his brows as he gave an idiotic, self-assured smile. "And I can help bring you to justice."

The slimy nature of that particular line made her shudder with revulsion.

"Detective," she began, traces of anger inflected in her voice. "This is in not at all appropriate. In fact, it's downright shameful. I don't know what's going on, but our interactions before this have been professional, and Detective Brennan seems to thing well of you, so I'll try to give you an out here. I think that you've been inhaling way too many fumes from that can of body spray you must be using in the closed interior of your vehicle. Maybe you should just go home and-"

"Smells good, doesn't it?" He interrupted her, brushing a hand against her hair, then down arm, "Don't play hard to get."

The doctor ducked out from beneath him, swatting his arm away. "Whatever you're feeling, detective—it is _not_ a two-way street, so I think you need to patrol your way right on to the next neighborhood." Her hand gestured curtly down the road.

"C'mon." Relentless, he tried to close the distance between them, "You don't want to take a little ride? I can turn the lights on. We can go fast." His teeth flashed another smile.

"Are you even listening to—?"

"Oh, THERE you are, Barbie-cakes!" A voice rose out from beyond the lawn, stalling all words. Barbara turned to see a tall, lanky figure cutting through the grass, sporting a mop of orange hair with shock of curls fanning out from all edges of her face. Her dress was casual—khaki slacks and a button-up shirt. The doctor had no idea what to make of her.

"Why _hello_ officer. Thank you so much for looking after my dear, wonderful friend. What would we possibly do without our bravely clad officers in blue? Now Barbra, darling, you promised me you'd help with that little problem on my sixth toe. You know how I have trouble reaching…"

"Uh," Barbara paused, and then shrugged, happy for the intrusion. "Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?"

"Lady, we were trying to have a little private conversation here," he tried to counter, pulling away from the doctor.

"She's such a lamb, officer." The stranger ignored him. "Always doing what's right for the people, even if it means battling toe fungus. There's this nasty wart right near the nail, all green and infected, and she's gonna freeze it off and scrape out its pussy guts! Stomach of steel, I tell you. Stomach of steel. Wanna see?"

The officer's nose wrinkled in disgust. "Ugh, no, that's uh…you can keep your shoe on ma'am."

"Oh, but it's so _juicy_ "

Barbara smiled as the detective gagged. "Well, detective," she gestured to the stranger as she backed toward the door, "duty calls, so if we can just…never have this conversation again that would be great."

"Aw, c'mon, dolly."

"You heard the lady," the stranger shooed him away. "People to save, warts to pluck, and I'm sure you have a few parking tickets to write with that, strong, burly arm of yours." The stranger squeezed his bicep. "You know, it's been a while since I've had a real, sturdy hand to hold me close. Just like a lumberjack. Hey are you free later on? Mind if I call you 'Lumby'?"

"Oh, uh, no- I mean, yes," the officer shook his head, taken aback, "I mean, no…no ma'am, not at all free. I'll just, um, my radio's calling. Gotta get that." Swiftly, he walked to the cruiser, revved the ignition, and drove off.

Barbara's mouth was agape as they stood on the porch together.

"Turned that one on him," The stranger chuckled, accent changing into something Barbara could tell was more natural to her tongue. Scottish? "Well, well, if it isn't Dr. Crusher herself." Her pallid eyes looked to Barbara. "Crusher of hearts', more like it. Ha!"

"Uh, wh—." She put a hand to her chin, wondering if she was still missing some of her memory, "who are you?"

"Cindy. Cindy Lane.* You might know me as one of your son's best teachers. Or at least, I would have been if the sorry little shrimp had ever shown up when I subbed for rehearsals. "

"I don't remember you."

"Yeah, well, the old string-bean dragged me into all of this right before he decided to get all goo-goo eyed over a human," the ginger paused, eyes growing wide. "–itarian." She added as an afterthought. "It's a shame, really. You could've frozen the sun with that cold heart of his, but he just _had_ to get all old and senile during his great, grumbling moment of triumph. I guess Strickler always did like being in the limelight. Get it? Lime green?" Cindy pointed at the doctor, and then waved a dismissive hand. "You don't get it. Doesn't matter. Oh man, I'm on a _roll_ tonight."

"I'm assuming Otto send you?"

"Yeah, though I'd say 'sent' is rather a loose term. More like 'railroaded.' Anyway," she shrugged, brushing past Barbara and into the hallway. "Herr Sauer-puss should be here in five minutes, tops. I just had to make sure the coast was clear, and _clearly_ it wasn't."

The doctor lifted one chiding finger into the air, but deflated before a word even left her mouth. "Why not," she muttered as she closed the door behind them.

As she traversed the hallway, her mind flew at record speed. Otto couldn't find out about her memory, or about her newfound ties to Trollmarket. Telling him about Trollmarket was as risky as telling Vendel about the Janus Order. It would limit her opportunity. From what she'd gathered, Janus—whatever their purpose, whatever they were-was the closest thing she had to gaining access to the Darklands—if nothing else, they maintained a consistent line of communication with its inhabitants, and were kept more abreast of any news regarding her son. Likewise, Vendel was the only entity available to teach her about trolls: their magic, their biology, and their weaknesses. Collecting as much information as possible meant playing two hands in this game, and both sides had to think that they had the advantage with her, and thus with Walter and her son.

And so, she would let Otto, and this new figure, believe her continued ignorance.

By the time she entered the dining room Cindy was reclining in one of the wooden chairs with her hands folded behind her head and her feet propped up on the table. Balancing the chair on two legs, she rocked back and forth.

"Nice place you got here, lass." Mind bringing me something cold? Water? Wine? Strickler's blood?" the changeling laughed. "Don't worry, I'm not asking for your ice cream or anything. Man, was _that_ guy a disaster. I thought he might start doing a caber toss right then on the spot."

The window of the kitchen's pass-through was open, and Barbara laughed on the other side as she walked in and reached to one of the cabinets. "Tell me about it," she said as she reached to get a glass. "Thanks, by the way."

"Hey, it's all vaudeville, kid."

"Well, I'm grateful." She smiled over her shoulder as she reached into the refrigerator. "How about lemonade?"

"Sounds snazzy," she closed her eyes, and started to hum a tune. Barely a few moments into the melody, the doorbell rang and the humming stopped.

Barbara set the two glasses she had poured on the table, ice cubes clinking in the light, but when she moved to enter the hallway, a hand barred her way.

"Let me," Cindy said, eyeing the round figure through the frosted glass. "Protocol."

Otto had his arms clasped behind his back when the door opened. "Danke, Frau Lane. Ah, Doktor," He spied Barbara past the orange mop of hair, "I see you have already met your escort."

"Escort?" She looked Cindy up and down, a shock of dread running straight to the stomach. Having someone following her around would limit her ability to sneak into Trollmarket, and she couldn't risk Otto, or any other members of the order, finding out.

"Richtig. I have assigned one of our top agents to look after you while I deal with more…impertinent matters." The German explained.

She place a hands on each hip, and scowled. "You didn't say anything about putting me on a leash."

The German shook his head. "Kein leash, Doktor. It is just a precaution to keep you safe, and to prepare you for the journey to come."

"I _don't_ want a babysitter. I've already got the police paddling up my canal. There's no need to send your little orange-haired Scotty dog as well."

"Hey!" Cindy piped in, "I resemble that remark."

Otto rolled his eyes at his fellow changeling. "You are on our radar, Doktor. That means you will be under the eye of others as well. Wir mussen take caution mit you. As I have said before: the less you know, the better. You must have trust."

"Trust has nothing to do with what we have here Mr. Scaarbach." She gestured between them. "I'm out of options, and you know it. We agreed that I would help you get this Strickler guy, and the eye-ball thing, in exchange for helping me find my son alive and in one piece-despite your boss' anger. What we have is an _alliance_ , and one I'm beginning to dislike more and more by the minute."

"Don't get your scrubs in a bunch." Cindy put an arm around the Doctor's shoulder and tried to steer them back toward the dining area. "I have a life and a job, you know. It's not like I'm going to sit there and hold your hand like a wee one all the time."

She let herself be led. "Does _every_ teacher working for Arcadia Oaks play a part in this crazy crime ring?"

"Only the ones that matter." Cindy snickered and it's not a 'ring.' Circles suggest commitment, and permanence, and all that gushy stuff. "We're _all_ about shifts, changes, and never staying in one place. Isn't that right, doughboy?"

Otto cleared his throat and shot Cindy a glance as his fellow changeling ushered Barbara into a chair.

So they _are_ changelings, she thought as she smiled to herself.

"Be that as it may," Otto took one of the two lemonades as he sat. Cindy gave Barbara the other, and went to pour herself another glass. "We don't have time to discuss out internal workings. I need to set a date for our departure, Doktor Lake."

"As long as it happens on _my_ terns."

Otto stayed silent for a while, tapping his fingers against his still-full glass. "Fine," he muttered, then took a sip. "Mhmm, this is quite good, Doktor."

Reflecting him, Cindy took a swig of her own glass, only to have her eyes widen before she spit it back out.

Both Otto and Barbara wiped their faces from the downpour of spittle.

"Did you use _salt_ instead of sugar?"

"What?" She sniffed her own glass, then took a sip. Her eyes clamped shut as her tongue jutted out of her mouth. "Ugh!"

"I thought it was tasty." Otto defended.

Cindy tried to scrape the salt off her tongue. "That's because where you come from, everything comes _pickled_ , Scaarbach."

"Ah, ah," he tutted with a waggling finger. "That is 'Mister' Scaarbach to you, Cindy, do not forget that _he_ has been demoted, and that you work for _me_ now."

"I'm trying to remember the moment where I asked to be a part of any of this," Cindy retorted, and then put a finger to her chin. "Oh, wait, that's right, both you and Mr. Goo-goo Eyes have threatened to have me served up like a grouse if I don't comply. I never granted him and frou-frou formalities, so if you think you're getting it out of me, then you can go stuff a boiled pluck in-"

"Cindy! Lane!" Otto barked tersely in warning. "Hast du forgotten what is at stake for you here?"

"Right, Sorry. 'Mister' Sourpickle." Cindy's expression was smug when Otto growled at her.

Amid the tension, Barbara cleared her throat. "How does two weeks sound?"

"Zwei?" Otto perked up. "That is a lot of time to ask for, don't you think? You son…"

"I know, I know," she closed her eyes. "I want to leave more than anyone, but this is supposed to be an undercover thing, right? I need time to change my schedule at work, and to get my affairs in order…in case something happens, and to keep everyone from getting suspicious. If I leave too quickly, both the police and my coworkers will think that I have something to hide. "

"Especially not that you've got Cassanova on your case," Cindy added, then looked to Otto. "One of her case workers is a skirt-chasing stud with a serious sweet-tooth for gingers. Seems to think she's straight from the silver screen-some red-headed seductress with a secret to hide. You'll be lucky if he doesn't try to stir up more suspicion just to have an excuse to come around more often."

"We will take care of the philanderer." Otto tapped his fingers together.

Barbara looked up. "Please don't kill him."

"Killing would leave a mark, Doktor," he assured her. "We don't like to leave marks."

Somehow, the words chilled her to the bone.

The discussion went on from there. A plan etched its way out of the mire of disagreements and negotiations. Barbara was to leave just after her two-week allotment, travelling first by a private plane owned by the organization Otto represented, and then by sea, on a similarly-owned vessel run by 'Aithex' industries. The company, he explained, was one of the Janus Order's many offshoots, which were: "conceived and created by your Strickler to aid us in our many undertakings."

"Wait," she'd snorted, genuinely amused, though not for the reasons they imagined. "so you're trying to tell me that I was secretly dating some crime-smuggling kingpin of the underground?"

"King piñata," Cindy's snickered.

"More or less," Otto replied, "He is dangerous. Which is why we need to find your son before he does."

She could see the lie now, see what Otto and the others were trying to bait her into—oh, they wanted to find her son, alright, but it had nothing to do with ushering him to safety their determination alone was what kept her working with them. At this point, if anyone had a chance at finding her son, however insidious their intentions, it was Janus.

This, she kept in mind after their plans had been settled and Otto was making his way toward the door.

"Well ladies, you know what they say," The German said, halfway out the door, "Der Teufel wartet auf niemanden-the devil waits for no one." he tipped his hat. "Tchuss,"

When the door closed behind him, Barbara glared at Cindy. "I don't care what Otto wants, you are _not_ spending the night here."

"Wasn't planning on it, girlie." Cindy smiled like a Cheshire cat. "But I will be checking in on you tomorrow morning, and the next, and the next, and the next," she said with a grin."

"Why? What does Otto think I'm going to do?"

She shrugged, nonchalant. "Who knows?"

"Don't you?"

The changeling shook her head, pale eyes gleaming with amusement. "Look, Raggedy Ann, I don't ask questions." She gestured to the air. "You're not the only one who's been caught in a bind. We're _both_ on a leash here. For now, when the schnitzel-man says jump, I ask if I can at least have a pair of moon shoes to make the landing look rad-expression within oppression. I've got my problems to work with, and you've got yours—getting through my situation means that I'll be keeping tabs for a while. Let's just try to make this situation as tolerable as possible. Stay out of trouble, and we won't have any reason to interact any more than what's necessary. Capisci?" She pointed a lengthy finger into Barbara's sternum.

"Works for me," Barbara knitted her arms together, and gestured toward the door. "The exit's all yours."

"I'll be around." Cindy jeered as she flounced out the door.

That night, once again, Barbara couldn't sleep. She tossed, and turned, and twisted her sheets, until she couldn't stand the weight of the covers. Getting up, she threw them aside, and let out a puff of air that cleared the straggles of hair from her face. The house was quiet, peaceful-Toby had snuck in during some dreadful hour and was long fast asleep. Only the air conditioner seemed to make any noise.

She wondered what the kid thought of the day.

It hadn't hit her yet—not really. She still felt detached and numb to the events that had transpired. Only one thought hummed within her, constant and relentless: she had to find Jim.

God, she hoped that he was somewhere safe, warm, and comfortable.

"Just hold on a little longer, sweetie." She said, with lidded eyes, knowing that his comfort was unlikely.

On the far side of the room, sat her vanity; her bare feet padded toward it, and to the cold, blue glow that the moonbeams cast upon its mirror. Sitting in the chair, she stared at her reflection, red hair gleaming darkly in the light.

Since remembering that morning, she hadn't had the time to process heartbreak. Finally, she allowed herself to think of him, of _them_.

It stung like alcohol on an open wound.  
Their relationship had been wonderful-unbelievable, almost. Walter's presence had seemed like a godsend at the time: he was smart, successful; he cared about Jim, and was relentlessly playful and gentle with his words. They'd gotten along well, and if there had ever been any hints of his true nature, they were certainly hard to detect.

Something about him had always seemed slightly wild, especially in the throes of their more passionate moments, but not once, in this world or the next, would she evet have pegged him as…well, a monster.

A real one, with green skin, and yellow eyes, and everything.

Wincing, she clamped her jaw shut, a mixed flush of disappointment, embarrassment, and anger creeping up her face and neck. He'd taken her for a fool.

How much of it, she wondered, had been an act? Vendel was right: some part of him had slipped.

"It wasn't the tiger you were afraid of, was it?" She whispered aloud, remembering the last night he'd come to her.

It all made sense now: Angor Rot was the tiger—the catalyst that had set that dreadful night in motion-and his deadly path had been set toward her home. She remembered Walter's eyes, how pale they'd seemed, and how shaky his hands had been when she'd stilled them.

He was trying to say goodbye, she realized with sudden coldness. He'd known it was the end for them.

Perhaps he did care. But even so, what did it matter? He'd lied to her, betrayed her, tried to hurt her son…there was no forgiveness to be found. It made the idea of meeting with him difficult at best, impossible at worst.

She had no idea how she was going to face him.

Barbara scoffed at the burning sensation in her eyes. _No,_ she thought, _no tears. Not for him._

Taking a deep breath, she let her hard gaze shift back to her reflection-taking in the hollow cheekbones, the narrow face, the joyless eyes... Sleep was a distant friend-mirth, even more so, and she longed for the day that she would get to see her child again. Swallowing back a knot-ridden throat, she folded her arms across the table, and set her head on top of them.

For the longest time, she stared into the void. Dark, dark, dark, like the bleakness Darklands, a labyrinth that kept her son roaming without rest.

In her dreams, she heard Jim screaming, but couldn't find a way to wake.

*CINDY LANE is the property of AZ-95, NOT Foxlight. Her character is featured at:


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